Latest News, October 4

It was a quiet summer, and it's a MUCH busier fall. Site has just been upgraded with our new blog and the company tour.  Here’s what has been happening at WeMeUs, and what’s coming up soon…

Mid-summer, we ended our relationship with the offshore development team we’ve been working with over the past year, and began putting together a small local team. Tough job - as the economy has improved and the Valley has heated up, good developers have become a scarce commodity.  But that team is now in place, coming up to speed and moving forward quickly on some key upgrades and changes over the next few weeks.  Our first goal is to finish off the relationship manager, and start beta testing on that, while we continue the Outlook integration, rules based system and corollary software that drive our ability to automate the time-consuming elements in managing and keeping in touch with your relationships. 

Now:  a request:  in finishing off the relationship manager, there are three additional fields being added to the information saved on each of your connections. Those are:

1.  Key Relationships – intended to encompass family, friends, other and will accommodate individuals related in some way to your connection. This will be located on the Additional Info tab. Six possible entries can be made into Key Relationships; each entry includes these three fields:  Relationship, Name, Notes.   For example, you might want to note the spouse and children of one of your colleagues here. 

2.  Birthday field – added to your connection’s Personal tab, feeds into reminders system.

3.  Special Dates – intended to track other dates of interest and feed into reminders system.  It will be located on the Additional Info page. Six possible entries can be made into Special Dates; each entry includes a date field and a notes field. 

Question - with these additions, is there any other information that you track on your connections that can’t be handled in WeMeUs?  If so, please respond with that information, either in email or on Tangler (I’m jumping ahead to the next item!).

New Forums - The next time you come to WeMeUs, you’ll find that we’ve replaced our previous forum link with a new one to a forum hosted by Tangler, a site that combines discussion forums with real time conversations, as well as enabling posting of videos and graphics.   If you’d like an early peek, click here: http://www.tangler.com/group/12766 . 

You’ll need to sign up for a Tangler account to contribute to discussions, although you can read threads without one.   I’m usually around there in the evenings; hope to “chat” with you up there in the near future. 

Can you help?  We’re evaluating taglines, your input is requested in a short survey (one question) here: http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.aspx?sm=Y8VdkIcYJltwG8qMsdIIYg_3d_3d

Partners -  Our first launch partner is Netshare (http://www.netshare.com - executive career management site that emphasizes networking as a key career skill), and are close on several others. WeMeUs will provide Netshare with a private area on the WeMeUs site, accessible from the Netshare site, where each of the 3000+ Netshare members will have their own WeMeUs account for faster, easier management of their relationships.

NAB - We’ve also established a networking Advisory Board whose members have deep experience in networking and building relationships, and are involved with an organization that emphasizes the power of relationships.  Current members include: 

Kathy Simmons, CEO & Founder of Netshare

Dave Opton, CEO & Founder of Execunet

Richard Guha, Chairman of MENG (Marketing Executives Networking Group)

Update, December 20

We are nearing completion on the initial capabilities of the relationship manager.  Your basic address book can now be easily sorted, searched and updated.  To eliminate re-entry of data, we've added a comprehensive import process that takes all of the information you've entered in Outlook and other email management tools and uses it to build your WeMeUs address book and contact detail.  We've also streamlined the process for adding individual contacts to save you time.

We really need help on testing both of these!  Please take the time to login and import your contact and relationship information, and add a few people individually.  Post your thoughts under suggestions and any problems you see on the bug thread.