Fandom on Imzy
Sep. 4th, 2016 10:49 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
alias_sqbrThis is a repost with permission of Hey fandom: Let's keep this up!, an official post to the main imzy community by the "Head of Product" Kaela. I felt like people outside imzy would be interested to see what features exist/are being added. I'm liking it over there, mostly, comments can be annoying compared to dreamwidth but are still 10000% better than on tumblr. And it could do with more people ;) If you're interested in joining apply at my community/blog, I have like 40 invites and it's quicker than waiting in the queue.
There are obviously a huge number of other features that we’ve built that work for fandom communities, from scheduling posts, blocking users, being able to create multiple profiles and post anonymously, saving posts and comments, and tons more, but these are just the things we’ve added in the last month as we’ve started talking more with fandom.
Sort comments oldest to newest: Will be an option early next week!
Tracking your work: This isn’t being added immediately, but we do track who uploaded every image, and we will be adding an area to your account in the future where you will be able to see everywhere an image you have uploaded was used on Imzy, and if you delete that image, it deletes it everywhere. We’ll also be adding notifications whenever a post or comment you make gets shared.
Increasing post tag options: We’re working on updating the designs for how you add tags so that we can allow you to manage way more post tags in your community without it becoming a total nightmare.The cap will stay at 10 per post, which a lot of people have actually agreed actually ends up being good because it makes sure just the best tags are used.
Multi-image posts: This should happen in the next month!
Series posts: Sometime in the next month, you should also be able to easily and automatically link posts in a series together!
Private messaging: This is mostly built out on the back end (if you’re a leader of a community, you’ll see the basic framework for it in leader chat), but it doesn’t have any front end yet and there are some additional considerations we have to figure out like how people are allowed to join/be invited to conversations, leave them, etc., that make it a little more complicated than leader chat. This was originally going to be coming sooner, but as we’ve assessed the number of things we want to get done in the next month or so, we’ve realized we have some other things that are a bit higher priority, so this has been pushed back a bit. Definitely still gonna happen, and still within the next few months, but it might be more like 3 months down the road, depending on how things go (or could get bumped up to 1 month from now! See note below about how we work.).
18+ communities: One of the things we’ve actually thought a lot about is allowing communities to require users to verify certain information in order to be able to join or participate. For example, we already have communities that can require you to use your real name in them if you want to be able to participate, which can be useful for IRL groups that create an online space to connect or professional communities, etc. But we’ve also talked about having communities down the road that require you to have your location be within a certain geographic area, or that require you to have your payment information set up (for more commerce-based communities as we get there), or to have age verifications as well. We’re not there yet, but an age verification will likely be the next one we add!
Community chat: This will be coming in some form, likely after we add private messaging. We’ve been going back and forth on a couple ways to potentially do this. Originally we were thinking that there would be a community chat room that leaders would have the option to turn on or off, but we’ve also discussed the idea of having chat posts, that basically would have live-streaming chat on it instead of comments, which would make it easier to create a new chat for each new episode, go back to old episodes, etc., the same way you can do with posts now, rather than having everything disappear completely. And if you just want a permanent chat room, you could basically just sticky a chat post to the top of the community. Or who knows, maybe we’ll do both! We’re still trying to figure out all the pros and cons and what makes sense to build in what order and what way. But either way, yes, there will be some form of community chat, as always, up to the leaders to decide if they want it or not.
Community digest email: Right now we give you the option to get an email of each post that is made to the community, when it happens, as well as a weekly digest email showing some of the top posts from all the communities you’re a member of. At some point, I would love to add the option for a weekly digest of posts from just a specific community, but that’s probably at least a couple months down the road.
View who’s a member of your community: We already let leaders know everyone who is a named member of the community. However, since you can have multiple profiles on your account, we don’t know “who” you are until you officially set your identity. For example, I think I have around 8 different usernames on this account. If I join a community, should it show that “Kaela” is a member, or my otherusername1, or otherusername2, etc? We’ll likely add a prompt/suggestion sometime soon for people to do so after they join a community, and possibly at some point after that then we would also give communities the option to make it mandatory, but that second part is only a possibly right now, as we haven’t fully thought through all of that and we are really careful about being as respectful of people’s identities as possible.
Gallery feed view: An option to browse your feed based on images is coming… eventually.
I should also mention that one of our biggest strengths here at Imzy is that we’re able to work really fast and flexibly most of the time. In the last month, it’s been really cool to be able hear your needs, quickly add new features, and see how excited that makes you. But remember that it can also go the other way. We are focused on being a great community platform for all communities, not just fandom. We’re doing our best to please as many people as possible, which means we’re balancing the wishlists of around 40,000 people and counting. So please also be patient with us as we go—we’re still a small team in private beta, working as hard and fast as we can, and that means that not all things are able to get done all at once.
And regardless of whether you’re interested in fandom or not, please keep talking to us! We love hearing your thoughts, learning more about how your communities work, and doing what we can to make Imzy even better for you. We want to make Imzy great, but we can only do it with your help. :heart:
Or share your favorite/promote your own below!
It’s been kind of a crazy ride recently. A month ago, we had almost no fandom communities on Imzy.
Two weeks ago, we had just 60 fandom communities.
Today, we have 629 fandom communities and counting, growing rapidly in size and activity.
We’ve talked to a lot of you about the features you need to be able to create a successful community space for fandom on Imzy, and we’ve learned a huge amount. Already, we’ve added tons of features at your request, and we have a lot more on our list thanks to you.
We know we’ve only just barely dipped our toes into how diverse, broad, and fascinating fandom communities can be in their themes and needs, but we’d love to keep learning from you.
I wanted to make a public post both to show you the impact you’ve had, how we’ve responded, and how we hope to continue working with you. If you haven’t talked with us yet, please do! You can comment on this post, chat with us directly via the link in your account dropdown, or send us an email.
And if you haven’t invited your friends yet, please do that, too! We’re in private beta, which means we’re still growing and changing a lot, and we prioritize a lot of features by how many of our users they’ll help—so the more fandom people there are here, the more we can keep building what you want. :)
Done
- Filtering post tags in communities by
includeorexclude - Draft posts
- Open images full-size in new tab when clicked
- Doubled max post length to 80,000 characters (comments are 10,000)
- Get notified of all new posts in a community
- Showing if posts or comments have been edited
- Personal blogs (1,000 created in the last two weeks!)
There are obviously a huge number of other features that we’ve built that work for fandom communities, from scheduling posts, blocking users, being able to create multiple profiles and post anonymously, saving posts and comments, and tons more, but these are just the things we’ve added in the last month as we’ve started talking more with fandom.
Coming
Sort comments oldest to newest: Will be an option early next week!
Tracking your work: This isn’t being added immediately, but we do track who uploaded every image, and we will be adding an area to your account in the future where you will be able to see everywhere an image you have uploaded was used on Imzy, and if you delete that image, it deletes it everywhere. We’ll also be adding notifications whenever a post or comment you make gets shared.
Increasing post tag options: We’re working on updating the designs for how you add tags so that we can allow you to manage way more post tags in your community without it becoming a total nightmare.The cap will stay at 10 per post, which a lot of people have actually agreed actually ends up being good because it makes sure just the best tags are used.
Multi-image posts: This should happen in the next month!
Series posts: Sometime in the next month, you should also be able to easily and automatically link posts in a series together!
Private messaging: This is mostly built out on the back end (if you’re a leader of a community, you’ll see the basic framework for it in leader chat), but it doesn’t have any front end yet and there are some additional considerations we have to figure out like how people are allowed to join/be invited to conversations, leave them, etc., that make it a little more complicated than leader chat. This was originally going to be coming sooner, but as we’ve assessed the number of things we want to get done in the next month or so, we’ve realized we have some other things that are a bit higher priority, so this has been pushed back a bit. Definitely still gonna happen, and still within the next few months, but it might be more like 3 months down the road, depending on how things go (or could get bumped up to 1 month from now! See note below about how we work.).
18+ communities: One of the things we’ve actually thought a lot about is allowing communities to require users to verify certain information in order to be able to join or participate. For example, we already have communities that can require you to use your real name in them if you want to be able to participate, which can be useful for IRL groups that create an online space to connect or professional communities, etc. But we’ve also talked about having communities down the road that require you to have your location be within a certain geographic area, or that require you to have your payment information set up (for more commerce-based communities as we get there), or to have age verifications as well. We’re not there yet, but an age verification will likely be the next one we add!
Community chat: This will be coming in some form, likely after we add private messaging. We’ve been going back and forth on a couple ways to potentially do this. Originally we were thinking that there would be a community chat room that leaders would have the option to turn on or off, but we’ve also discussed the idea of having chat posts, that basically would have live-streaming chat on it instead of comments, which would make it easier to create a new chat for each new episode, go back to old episodes, etc., the same way you can do with posts now, rather than having everything disappear completely. And if you just want a permanent chat room, you could basically just sticky a chat post to the top of the community. Or who knows, maybe we’ll do both! We’re still trying to figure out all the pros and cons and what makes sense to build in what order and what way. But either way, yes, there will be some form of community chat, as always, up to the leaders to decide if they want it or not.
Community digest email: Right now we give you the option to get an email of each post that is made to the community, when it happens, as well as a weekly digest email showing some of the top posts from all the communities you’re a member of. At some point, I would love to add the option for a weekly digest of posts from just a specific community, but that’s probably at least a couple months down the road.
View who’s a member of your community: We already let leaders know everyone who is a named member of the community. However, since you can have multiple profiles on your account, we don’t know “who” you are until you officially set your identity. For example, I think I have around 8 different usernames on this account. If I join a community, should it show that “Kaela” is a member, or my otherusername1, or otherusername2, etc? We’ll likely add a prompt/suggestion sometime soon for people to do so after they join a community, and possibly at some point after that then we would also give communities the option to make it mandatory, but that second part is only a possibly right now, as we haven’t fully thought through all of that and we are really careful about being as respectful of people’s identities as possible.
Gallery feed view: An option to browse your feed based on images is coming… eventually.
A note on how we work
I should also mention that one of our biggest strengths here at Imzy is that we’re able to work really fast and flexibly most of the time. In the last month, it’s been really cool to be able hear your needs, quickly add new features, and see how excited that makes you. But remember that it can also go the other way. We are focused on being a great community platform for all communities, not just fandom. We’re doing our best to please as many people as possible, which means we’re balancing the wishlists of around 40,000 people and counting. So please also be patient with us as we go—we’re still a small team in private beta, working as hard and fast as we can, and that means that not all things are able to get done all at once.
And regardless of whether you’re interested in fandom or not, please keep talking to us! We love hearing your thoughts, learning more about how your communities work, and doing what we can to make Imzy even better for you. We want to make Imzy great, but we can only do it with your help. :heart:
Explore fandom communities on Imzy here!
Or share your favorite/promote your own below!
