Help us congratulate Peter, who represented the City of Santa Cruz at Gov 2.0 today and won the opportunity to present again tomorrow at the Gov 2.0 Summit!

If you didin’t already know, the City of Santa Cruz is solving its budget crisis by asking its citizens for help. Using a UserVoice forum and opening up the books, they have developed a plan and are on their way to getting out of the red. All of this was made possible by the community with the people suggesting and vetting ideas.

The City of Santa Cruz is also entered in the Forrester Groundswell award for impacting society for the better. Vote for them by clicking on their stars at the bottom of the page here: http://bit.ly/gkEd7.

Geeks On A Plane leverages the combined cross border networks of Dave McClure, Founders Fund and Web2Asia to offer attendees an opportunity to accelerate the process of meeting and connecting with key contacts in Tokyo, Beijing and Shanghai’s tech and investment sector.

On this trip, UserVoice we’re meeting a slew of entrepreneurs and various start-ups to find out how we can better help companies with their Japanese and Chinese customers.  To demonstrate our sincere interest in moving into the Asian market, we launched a Japanese translation of UserVoice today!  We’ll be active to seek out opportunities to partner with local companies for a localized user experience on UV.

If you’d like to follow the action, please feel free to watch our activity on Twitter or the FaceBook fan page.

There’s a whole bunch of blogging going on out there, so there’s probably not much we can write that hasn’t already been written elsewhere.

So, the only thing left to say is…

Thank you.

Team UserVoice

10:57 Update – Thanks for all the excitement today!

• Original Press Release
  
• TechCrunch
• The Deal
• ZDNetAsia
• ZDNet
  
• Betaworks
• VentureBeat
• FastCompany
• Yahoo Finance
  
• Marketwire – Xing release highlighting UV
• Yahoo Finance — Xing release highlighting UV
• Sys-Con
• Francine Hardaway
• Techmeme
• Wall Street Journal – added may 19th, 2009
• Mixergy – added may 19th, 2009

The findings were surprisingly weighted toward logins using Google as their preferred ID.

That’s why today’s blog post on Google Code Updates is really a wonderful addition to our offering at UserVoice. Google has implemented a brand new OpenID API to make it even easier for services to accept Google User IDs — best thing about this news is that they chose to feature UserVoice for their example!

What this does is makes your UserVoice experiece way more seamless in that users no longer have to leave the page to authenticate their accounts. In additioon, emails can be passed along so our Google users can be kept in the loop for the status of the ideas they’ve participate. This is a huge bonus for brands wanting to keep in touch with customers and truly engage these users and efficiently “close the feedback loop.”

Go check out the article on Google’s website — there’s much more info there, but thank you so much to JanRain for featuring us on their blog as well!!!

Going forward, we will now be 20% more capable thanks to our newest team member, Thomas Knoll (pronounced kuh-nall). He’ll be taking on the role of Chief Community Officer.  Some of you will know “TK” for his work at Seesmic.

We think he’s an above-average, super-swell guy having lived the last 10 years in Minnesota, and then Texas before that — so with that kind of background, you know he’s got to be good people!

What we like most about Thomas is his attention to customer details.  He sincerely looks for ways to find out what a customer needs, and then he advocates for their cause — whether it be for a feature update or a UI change.  He aspires to make the customer experience perfect.  And that’s really what you guys deserve.

He’s also a bit of an engineer.  So he’ll be holding customer hands throughout the installation process to insure they have the most satisfying results possible with their new feedback forums. That’s a change that we know will make a huge difference!

He’s also working to provide a number of enhancements so that updates at UserVoice are much more visible.  For instance, he’s already set up a status page to help UV Admins view changes to our releases as soon as they post – better go grab the RSS feed now!

So without gushing any further….  Here’s Thomas:

I can’t even begin to tell you how excited I am to get to know you and the rest of the UserVoice ecosystem.  Ever since the first time I laid eyes on that little red feedback tab, I have been a fan.  And, now, I see it everywhere!  Which means there are a ton of you out there using and implementing the service.  Obviously, UserVoice believes it’s a pretty good idea for companies/organizations to listen to their communities.  That’s why I am honored to join the UserVoice family as CCO.

Yes, CCO. That officially stands for Chief Community Officer but if you ask @kevinmarks he will tell you it should stand for Chief Conversation Officer (or Tummler, or Geisha, or Animateur).  Others go by Community Evangelist or Community Manager.  At the core of all of these is a recognition that companies and organizations need to join the conversation about their brand and be a hospitable presence in that community.  I guess that makes me the host of the hosts?  Or the listener to the listeners?  Whatever it makes me, I’m here for you, and will do everything I can to improve your ability to turn your customers into champions!

But… enough about me.  I really want to get to know you better.  Would you be willing to share below what most excites you about customer engagement?  Or, maybe what is most frightening about opening your doors to public feedback?

If you think you’d like to get to know Thomas a little more, check out this video he made with Whit Scott — They won a Ford Fiesta for six months as part of the Fiesta Movement Campaign.
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Welcome to the team Thomas!!!

Today is April 17th. A year ago, at noon o’ clock – UserVoice opened it’s doors to the world. I remember sitting at my desk in Wausau, Wisconsin thinking, “Wow! We’re really doing it!”

Five companies signed up the first day.

Not exactly the big bang of growth we had hoped, but at least we had stopped talking about the idea, and now we were actually making it happen.

Earlier, we had set up a UserVoice page internally for ourselves and a couple other projects. For us it was working, but we wondered if anyone else would care as much. In the end, this proved to be hugely invaluable as users told us what was most important to them. Rather than build what we thought they wanted, we built what we knew they needed.

This of course was what UserVoice was built for, so we discovered very quickly what worked and what was junk. So, we tweaked and adjusted as we grew to streamline the service.

We Built It, Now What?

The next step was promotion – being an early Twitter person, this was my natural inclination. Considering we had very little money, the cost was perfect – FREE! Twitter served as a fantastic marketing tool that helped us generate new leads and make a name for ourselves. Suddenly writers were doing stories on us and things began spiking on up to early Summer.

Here we were, getting calls from major brands & agencies! They wanted features we didn’t have and APIs we didn’t yet provide. The thing was… we were out of money. We all started hustling design jobs or contracting – but we kept at it. Some days were much harder than others.

We were afraid that the initial interest in our project was a false positive — it seemed to be taking forever for big companies to make decisions. Could we create revenue faster by simply making smaller, more departmental sales?

None of us were sleeping well, and stress does pretty weird things with your frame of mind – a little touch and go there for awhile.

Making A Decision

And that’s when something amazing happened. A muggy July evening, Rich and I had a long phone conversation. We talked about what we wanted to happen – how neither of us were happy trying to make it work. We wanted to MAKE it work. We decided.

We quit the side work the very next day and just focused.

Soon after we secured a couple of paid pilots. Family members chipped in. Money trickled in. It wasn’t much, but we were happy and watched things blossom accordingly.

Live, Work, Repeat

We needed to cut our costs, so in September we moved to Santa Cruz, where we found a vibrant new tech community beginning to flourish. If we needed to, we could still get to the City (San Francisco), but housing was considerably cheaper and the quality of life was wonderful. We found a small bungalow with a guest house in the back (occupied), so Emily and I rented the main house with our two kids (we’re married), while Rich slept on the couch.

By October, the economy was sliding. Rich moving out was becoming less likely. In December, the guest house out back opened up and we added a new team member, Scott Rutherford. Together they moved into the guest house where our dog, Rocky now likes to check in from time to time for a good scratch. We were still, and still are, all living on the same plot of land!

By shacking up together, sharing home-cooked meals, and eventually getting office space donated at the local coworking space, NextSpace, we were able to keep our initial costs down, streamline our efforts, and be amazingly efficient.

When you work AND live with your co-workers, there is no “9-5.” It’s 24-7. Our home became the UserVoice “compound,” which is one of the reasons we think made this work. We supported and encouraged each other to keep going. When one was down, the rest worked to pick the other up. This proved vital to our early days as a pre-revenue start up.

One Year Later

So all of that under our belt, we now have 13,683 organizations using our feedback service including Fortune 500 companies, startups, non-profits, education organizations, politicians, open source companies, rock bands and financial institutions! What a difference a year makes!

Anyway, we’re very pleased to have had the opportunity to share this last year with you. In the coming weeks we’ll be announcing a slew of new features, as well as a super improved widget – so be on the look out. What we’ve done so far merely a twinkle of what’s ahead!

More than that, we want to say thank you — so, for the next 48 hours, please be our guest and take 60% off your choice of Bronze, Silver or Gold for the next year.

Simply use the coupon code: oneyearolder

That’s it – again thank you. Have a great weekend!

P.S. — Looks like BusinessWeek took notice of us too – see BEDROOM STARTUPS

Seeking a kick-ass designer to create an amazing user experience for our customers and their users. It will be your responsibility to make user feedback an enjoyable process, designing and supporting some of the largest most recognizable brands in the world – and some that aren’t so much! We need sexy and usable user interfaces, copy that sings and workflows that are to die for.

You have to be completely comfortable with:

• Rapid development / prototyping of new features working directly in XHTML/CSS/JS.
• Working self-sufficiently with Ruby on Rails views / helpers, building templates.
• Debugging cross-browser compatibility issues in no time flat.
• Javascript, both standard libraries (Prototype, jQuery, YUI) as well as an ability to write “naked” JS.
• FireBug for debugging.
• Writing concise copy that users understand.

Bonus points for:

• Obsessive compulsive tendencies to details.
• Experience building embeddable widgets.
• Experience doing A/B testing and funnel analysis (especially on sites with volume).
• Start-up -or- Enterprise support experience.
• Contributions to open source projects.
• Familiarity with Git and GitHub.
• Maintain a blog or twitter account.
• Enjoying the company of a medium-sized canine.

See all available positions here

To get things started, we’ve stepped forward with four of the more popular Western European tongues:

French – German – Spanish – Dutch

This is a huge step for us, but is of course still a bit “alpha,” so if you see glitches, please feel free to post them on our pbwiki.  We expect to be rolling out many more languages as we produce localized files.  Special thanks to those who’ve helped us get started — If you’re interested in seeing UserVoice in your language, please join the team and help us out!

In addition to language translation, the UV Elves have been slaving away with some other zesty goodness:

Set Your Own Custom Vote Counts

This is another request we’ve been getting – the ability to set your own default vote count.  So instead of the the default of 10 votes, you could bump the default to 25… or maybe 3?

Look for this ability to be included for Bronze account holders and higher service levels!

Customize Your Page Titles

For all of you SEO fans out there, we’ve added the ability to customize your Page Title.  This is a great opportunity to tweak your settings and get the most bang for your buck out for Search Engine results! Settings are customizable for each individual forum, so you can optimize accordingly. Increase your Page Rank and be found on Google – better users find you and see you’re listening, than have them find a competitor!

Again, look for this feature to be included on Bronze accounts on up.

Speedier Service

You’ll also notice the speed of our service increasing. We’ve been very diligent to offload services that were slowing the service down. That coupled with a number of enhancements and updates to the backend, and you’ve now quite the zippy experience!

Improved Search

Let’s face it, our Search feature was a bit on the stinky side.  Consider it Fabrezed!  Your new searches will be faster, more accurate, and downright fresher smelling!

Finally…  Introducing Our New Chief Technology Officer

None of this would have been possible were it not for our new CTO, Dr. Scott Rutherford. Having jumped the pond from London, Scott delivers a wealth of experience, depth of  humor, and an occasional meandering around particle physics – we’re thrilled to have him aboard and his efforts are already paying off in huge dividends.  If you’re not already following him on Twitter – link him up @scottrutherford

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UPDATE: Seesmic Chooses UserVoice

A few weeks ago, @Loic Le Meur approached us about setting up a branded UserVoice page for their video conversation website, Seesmic.  This is a nice example of how forums can be modified to match your company’s look & feel.

Check it out: http://feedback.seesmic.com

]]> http://blog.uservoice.com/2009/03/03/going-global-localizing-uservoice/feed/ 18 http://blog.uservoice.com/2009/02/09/19mo-for-domain-aliasing-private-forums-specials-for-open-source-and-conferences/ http://blog.uservoice.com/2009/02/09/19mo-for-domain-aliasing-private-forums-specials-for-open-source-and-conferences/#comments Mon, 09 Feb 2009 08:18:17 +0000 Richard White http://blog.uservoice.com/?p=180 Quick Hit:

• New ‘Tin’ plan ($19/mo) includes Domain Aliasing, Private Forums and more.
• New special plan for Conferences ($189/mo) includes Unlimited Voters, Domain Aliasing, Custom Design and more.
• New special plan for Open Source Projects (Free!) includes Unlimited Voters, Unlimited Forums and more.
• Running discounts for Startups, Non-Profits and Twitter apps
• Flat-rate pricing for our Platinum plan that includes Unlimited Voters.

Many of these changes came directly from YOUR feedback on our premium services forum. Get involved and tell us how we can further improve!

Pushing Tin!

We’ve just rolled out our Tin plan which is $19/mo and includes:

• Domain aliasing (Your forum on feedback.yourdomain.com; Great for SEO)
• Private forums (For private betas and internal projects)
• Analytics
• Moderation tools
• Email Support
• More forums & voters
• Ad-free

Private forums are especially useful. We use them here at UserVoice quite liberally. We have an internal team forum, one for paying customers and one for beta users. Enjoy!

Richard White
CEO, UserVoice

We’ve decided to switch to tracking usage based on the number of voters in the last 30 days. The advantages of this are:

• It’s more clear. Anyone who votes on your forum applies to your count.
• It’s doesn’t penalize you for users who haven’t returned in a while. You’re not penalized for a voting spike that occurred a few months ago.

Since these are very different numbers than all-time users there is a different usage limit now (ex: on our Bronze plan 10K users => 1K voters / month). If you login to your forum and go to /admin you’ll see a current voter count in the bottom right hand corner.

We hope this change will simplify your experience and encourage ongoing use of your forums. If you have any questions or concerns please let us know and we’ll deal with them straight away.

Thanks for your support,

Richard White
CEO, Uservoice

New Service Plan (self service sign up)
Now that we’ve been able to improve our offerings, we can finally reveal a smaller bite-sized service level for start-ups and small business.  This will be known as the Bronze Package – priced at $89/mo. (discount code below).

This plan includes:

• 10,000 Users, 6 Forums, 1 Private Forum, 6 Admins
• Moderation & Analytics
• Domain Aliasing & Single Sign On (SSO)
• Email Support

Silver Package Supercharged!
This service now includes Single Sign On, Domain Aliasing as well as access to APIs.  For and away, this is now our best valued package and sure to cover the majority of business needs.

New Administration Interface
We’re doing more to make administration of your forum even easier to use & understand. Note that the “Manage Account” has  been changed to a tab at the top that says “Admin,” in addition to a small banner being placed on the sidebar.  We’ve also made is yellow so as to stand out clearly.

we <3 skitch

New Cookie-Based Single Sign In
Now that this is in place, we’ll now be able to control access to private UserVoice forums via login. Since this is available, we’re now going to include SSO, APIs & domain aliasing in our Silver package – making it a huge value to businesses looking to dialogue with customers or employees.

Better Search
To speed up and improve UV searches, we swapped out our old search tool for a better one!

Updated Terms of Service
Now that we’re handling credit card processing, we had to add some verbiage.

So Let’s Get Started
Use discount code LIGHTNINGREFLEXES which gives the first 20 people to signup for our Bronze or Silver plans 20% off  (if you sign up before Jan 27 2009)To take advantage of this discount:If you are signing up for the first time, go to our Sign Up Page

• Login to your UserVoice Admin page.
• Look to the left – you’ll see “Subscription Plan”Select, “Change Plan.”
• Select your preferred plan.
• Insert this Coupon Code:   LIGHTNINGREFLEXES

UPDATE: Here’s the announcement you’re looking for: New Service Plan & Features

The initial goal was to provide a simple way for a WordPress administrator to add the UserVoice feedback tab to specific pages or posts on their blog.

The plugin allows the administrator to configure UserVoice options at a per-post level, which allows feedback to be gathered on multiple different topics within the same blog. Each post can be associated with a different UserVoice forum, or even different UserVoice accounts altogether. I felt that this approach would offer the most flexibility, while still remaining simple to configure.

One option for the design of the UserVoice plugin was to simply allow the administrator to enter the appropriate javascript content block to each page. In order to make the plugin accessible to the broadest audience possible (including non-technical users), it made sense instead to collect the variable data (e.g., tab position, account name, etc.) using a form, and to substitute that data into the appropriate javascript before injecting it into the page footer.

Thank you very much Chris, we really appreciate your hard work!

If you’ve created a widget or cool implementation of UserVoice, please let us know and we’ll post it here!

• 231 days since we launched (April 17th, 2008).
• 530k total votes logged.
• 120M+ widget impressions.
• 48.6% growth in just the last 30 days.
• 7000 forum registrations.
• 4 t’s from ChoiceShirts.

With all of this exposure, it was only a matter of time before larger companies took notice. It started out with a few requests dribbling in for standard features… things like private pages, domain aliasing and sub-forums.

Then bigger requests came down the pipe such as custom design, APIs, and single sign on. Before we knew it, we had an Enterprise level service. Thing is, we never told anyone we wanted to be an Enterprise solution, but suddenly here we are.

A new focus, a new destination – Today we’re taking off the “beta”

What does that mean for accounts created during our Beta phase? Absolutely nothing. You will keep all of the features you’ve come to depend on. Future free accounts will have a slimmer version as those little “extras” will now be reserved for paid accounts.

Going forward we’ll have multiple tiers of service addressing internal users, non-profits, and of course Fortune 5000 companies. Are you a start-up? We haven’t forgotten you either, Sign Up to discover extra special pricing.

We’re also thrilled to reveal some companies we’re working with. We haven’t talked much about customers before – mostly ’cause we don’t aim to be a destination for feedback. We’d rather keep users on your site, not pull them away.

In the near future you’ll be hearing about a number of new tools and features that will only further this objective. We want to be the easiest and most accessible feedback platform available. With your help, we’re well on our way.

Thank you for choosing UserVoice!

P.S. Care to give feedback on our service plans