Recent Activity

• 

  Minti articles

  what about pm capabilities? you need to be a member in order to speak directly with other parents dont you?

  Posted 18 Jun 07

• 

  Questions

  Not sure if it matters, but my wife is beginning to rank quite highly, without interacting hugely with the site. She tends to spend most of her time within Minti reading etc, but the aggregation of her blog lends quite a lot of content to her Minti presence. Is this a concern, or does it simply make sense that because she appears to be generating so much content she should be seen as a valuable member? She brought it up with me the other day, and as I am in the process of working on our own aggregation model I am interested in what you think. We won't be adding any kind of rankings in the near future, (mind you that's not a prejudice, simply a timing / funding / priority thing), but in terms of valuing members I think it might be an important question.

  Posted 23 Apr 07

• 

  Member Funcionality

  My wife is a regular user, and loves it, so althought I cannot give a first person account on all functionality, I can certainly tell you what she does and doesn't like, Hope this helps a little.

  Since this is my first entry here though, and it's 1 in the morning, excuse me while I ramble a little...

  OK, firstly, the rankings rock, although they seem to be copping a bit of flak lately. The idea of  being able to filter advice based on who's giving it seems to me very important. Real world example - I will sometimes take my mothers advice, and I will listen to advice given by friends of friends, but I will very rarely even take on board advice freely given by someone I pass on the street. On average,the members giving it bad press seem to be the ones who are only in it for the rep anyway, and who's content generation is pretty average to say the least. When Candice started checking out Minti, it was the rankings which she used to feel her way around the site.

  Aggregation - What can I say? An aweosme addition, really well implemented. I didn't have to help Candice with it at all. Now she furthers her audience and encourages our members to do the same, and Minti pulls in quality content. Win win really. This is an area our members are constantly on our back about, but being a two person show with no funding means that things happen a little slower than I'd necessarily like.

  I couldn't see any real theming capabilities. Maybe I was looking in the wrong place? I understand that the site is a lot more clean and cohesive without them, but I know our members tend to be all about making their space their own, and personalising it every way they can. Perhaps this is stepping outside of core functionality though...?

  Love the Questions and Answer functionality, and the questions I have seen posted seem to be getting answers of surprising depth which is really cool.

  Ayway that's all I can think of off the top of my head, but if I think of anything, or Candice comes across anything I'll post it. Great site though. How did it end up with the Starlight promotion?

  Richard. 

  By the way, something you might find really interesting, that you wouldn't necessarily pick up in user testing, is that your member base is also quite fiercely loyal which is an awesome achievement. When Candice first joined Minti (initially out of curiosity after speaking with Rachel seeking advice on startups in the Australian marketplace), she was practically torn apart by several members after she posted about what she was trying to achieve with our site, and the difficulties we were facing. Although she was able to very quickly defuse the situation by pointing out that we were not a competitor, it was really quite amazing how quickly users were ready to stand up and defend Minti. You can't buy that kind of loyalty, so you are obviously doing something right

  Posted 23 Apr 07