ever wonder what are some of the things you can do on buddystumbler? well, we have created a touring page that would help answer some of your questions. ;)
you can visit the touring page in any one of the two ways:
1. by clicking on the introductory image on the front page
2. by clicking on "tour" at the bottom of any page
don't forget we have a faq page as well. on it you will find information on buddy scoring and much more!
i'm asked on a fairly regular basis what makes buddystumbler different from the "other" social networks out there in existence today. in some cases, i am asked what's the hook?
to the extent these questions are asked, it goes without saying that buddystumbler clearly has not left a strong enough first impression to set itself apart - the three of us are actively working on this at this very moment.
however, if you dig deep enough there are clear diffrentiators between buddystumbler and every other social network in existence today.
1. buddystumbler is geared around searching for new friends
friendster built up an enormous user base under the guise of tracking and staying in touch with friends. however, over time people actively and gratuitously started adding people to their network - friend, foe, or otherwise. why? in the early days, the size of one's search pool was defined by the size of one's extended network (this of course is no longer true). in order for people to swim in a bigger pond, they had to increase the size of their social network.
with a large network in hand, two types of searches were conducted: a) searches for people they knew and b) searches for people they want to know. while the search parameters friendster presented (city, name, school, etc.) were apt for searching for people you once knew, it failed miserably for creating new connections. we all know people who "check out" other people on friendster, yet how many of those same people actually established new friendships through friendster?
other entrants such as myspace that are predicated on existing social networks also tend to fall fairly flat on its face when it comes to looking for people with specific interests - the reason of course is that its underpinnings are ultimately geared around keeping and retaining one's existing social network much like its inspiration and predecessor.
if you go to myspace right now and search people -> camping what do you find? All users whose username has camping in it. Out of the millions of users on myspace, I'm sure that more than 22 (number of results returned as of today) are into camping.
in contrast to friendster and mysapce, any person can search buddystumbler and when you do search buddystumbler, your searches are against an individual's keywords. buddystumbler doesn't attempt to compete with the existing social networks. instead, buddystumbler strives to solve the problem of creating new friendships that previously did not exist by allowing users to find people whom they might like to meet. thus, buddystumbler's search parameters are completely different from the competition. fields like names and schools aren't search parameters on buddystumbler because we assume you're looking for someone you don't already know.
2. meet people who want to meet you
the stumbling part of buddystumbler refers to the fact that on buddystumbler, you exchange im information only when both parties acknowledge mutual interest. introductions between two individuals made in this context go far smoother than otherwise. this is the online equivalent of going to a bar, making a "link" with someone across the room before you approach them. if you haven't made the link, you're not going to have much success at conversation. to the extent you have made a link, your chances of success for creating a connection will be much higher. this bold attempt at effectively simulating natural human behavior has not been tried in any social network.
if you're tired of trolling through the other networks exchanging notes back and forth - or worse being buried in a flurry of notes you don't care for - then buddystumbler is for you. buddystumbler doesn't have a private message (pm) system. buddystumbler instead allows you to exchange im usernames so that you can interact in real-time over im instead of leveraging antiquated, asynchronous messaging. you'll know in 5 minutes if a person is worth talking to ever again over im. in a pm system, it could take you days - and you still might not get a hold of their im username!
3. simplicity meets meaning
buddystumbler enables its users to create a profile that paints a complete picture of who they want to be online without the litany of questions commonly found in other social network profiles. on buddystumbler, beyond the basics of how old you are, what sex you possess, and who you are looking for, buddystumbler requires only a brief description of yourself and keywords that describe you. it's incredible how much you can discern from just a few keywords. i am personally acquainted with yim82, kentuckyfried, and jcyw yet who knew they all had hong kong in common? certainly not me! because buddystumbler is meant to be a conversation starter, buddystumbler doesn't require long profiles or provide our users with blog functionality. again, the other social networks do a great job of this and we're not here to compete with them. buddystumbler is designed around solving a very specific problem - creating connections between strangers.
4. good people need to be recognized
in other networks, there doesn't exist a measure for being a good citizen. on buddystumbler, there is. next to each person's username is a number in parenthesis which represents an individual's buddy score. the buddyscore is a function of both how many compliments an individual receives (high 5's) as well as how many people the individual was able to cajole onto the site. the formula is 2 * high fives + invitations. while helping the buddystumbler community grow is valued, being a good person that is complimented is worth more.
a person's buddyscore will provide an implicit indicator for how likely they are to interact with you should you buddy request them and if you should match - are they even worth talking to? the feedback people receive will often be from new people an individual has met through the site (again the site is built around creating new connections) rather than testimonials from friends. this is a different kind of feedback that simply doesn't exist today in any network. on other networks that are centered around friendships, understanding how an individual rates is somewhat secondary to just tracking that individual's going's on. however, on buddystumbler an individual's purpose here is to meet new people and the buddyscore provides an empirical measure to gauge an individual's merits on the site.
yim and i are completely bleary eyed from the trying to get buddystumbler off the ground. up until the 17th or so, nobody really had a chance to play with buddystumbler at all. once folks started to take a peek, a number of flaws surfaced.
can't find anyone
the original work flows assumed that the system would have lots of people. we didn't account for what is commonly referred to in the programming world as a 'bootstrap' problem - what happens when the system is just starting up. by limiting our search to exact keyword matches, folks who were simply auditing the site had a terrible time finding a profile to look at.
solution
we've since done a couple of things.
1. keyword only search is now the default search. until more people join, the simplest search with the fewest parameters will yield the most results.
2. if only one keyword is entered, it is a fuzzy match.
3. blank searches are allowed. if you enter nothing and hit search, you will return all users in the system. during development testing, we had created databases with thousands of users - so in the near term such a query wouldn't bring the application to its knees.
in order to speed up the performance of the site, the application is deployed in 'production' mode on the rails stack. because parts of the code base were incorrectly coded (static relationships between models were dynamically computed - relying on classes to be loaded on every access if you must know), various parts were misbehaving: most notably the buddymatching itself. oops!
solution
we've since addressed these issues.
our navigation was curiously missing a way to go back to the search dialog box. according to our traffic reports and also based on feedback by j, it was a sorely needed feature.
solution
we've since added a search link to the banner and apparently folks love clicking on it.
so, you've taken the call to arms to heart and you've sent out a bunch of invitations. you've since learned that one (or more) of your friends is too old, too young, too married, too single, too (fill in excuse here)... to join buddystumbler. what do you do? you're tired of looking at this person's entry under your invitations tab because he's just not going to join. so, you im han and tell him you want delete!
Solution
han ims yim and she goes ahead adds that feature for you.
you finally get around to inviting your friends to buddystumbler and then you discover all the emails are being routed to bulk mail.
solution
as it turns out, our current host site5, is on a greylist at Yahoo! for sending spam. despite emails to Yahoo! to take our site off the greylist, Yahoo! claims it can't do that. as a result, we've leveraged our backup account on dreamhosters to send mail through our sister domain buddystumbler.net. e-mails should be passing through now like a fresh sea breeze.
after a week of tweaking the site, we're finally ready to show buddystumbler to our friends and family. one of the initial challenges for buddystumbler is: how do you get people to sign up if there's nobody on the site?
this is where the friends and family launch comes in. for the next month, before we really go live with the site, we want to show the site off to our friends and family (and hopefully their friends and family too). this will be a completely viral marketing exercise. during this time, we hope to incorporate tweaks and suggestions people may have and determine how well the site holds up under low-load (for the geeks out there, we're currently on a shared hosting environment running on ruby/rails).
we want to get the word out so we're running a little contest: the person who is able to get the most friends to sign up and fill out a full profile (through the my account > invitations interface) will receive a check (or paypal) from me to the tune of $800. the contest ends midnight 1/21.
after that week, our plans will be to begin advertising the site on craigslist, discussion boards, and campus visits (first destination will be cal of course). if we can get to a reasonable amount of volume of 2000 to 3000 users, we will then issue a press release; hopefully a press agency or two will pick it up.
i have no idea if this viral marketing exercise will work (or not), but here's to hoping! as of this posting there are 8 users (most of them friends of mine who agreed to help us take out some of the nasty initial bugs). clickbyclick is currently leading the pack after having cajoled his fiance traydog to sign up. that's one sign up folks. if you can get two of your friends to fill out a full profile you'll be leading the pack!
have fun and happy stumbling!
UPDATE: Yahoo! is moving all invitations from buddystumbler to the bulk mail folder.
we're actively working on this problem as we speak. for now, if you are sending invitations to Yahoo! you will need to gently prod your friends (perhaps in a second email) to check their bulk mail folder.
the time has come for me to come out of hiding (e made the remark that it was ironic that a private person like me was starting a social networking site). i'm a coder by trade though i no longer write much code professionally. once in a while, i will whip out a keyboard to tap a few missives here and there just to make sure the team still knows i can pump out a hello world or two (your choice of Java, C, C#, C++, Perl, Fortran, Pascal, Basic, Visual Basic, and English). out of the office, i still enjoy writing code in part because i am enamored by all of the open source innovation that is taking place in the marketplace today.
as for beginnings, my journey that has led me down this path to this precise moment where i am authoring an entry about myself for this site called buddystumbler actually began three years ago. it was then that i met j who encouraged me in earnest to stop talking the talk and walking the walk when it came to new ideas. in the times since, i've started to recognize how important it is for me to create something that might add value to someone else's life. the culimination of these two ideas led me down the path of creating buddystumbler. during this process, i was fortunate enough to 'stumble' upon amit and yim and together things came together quite quickly.
it's unclear to me what will become of this. i've had some pretty blunt and harsh remarks said to me about this idea so my expectations are curbed. i view this site as part of a journey; it'll be exciting to see what lies ahead. follow along?
i heard these over the radio on my ride home last night and thought i would share it with everybody. these were supposedly things you should never say to your mate/spouse, but i think all of them but one apply to people we care for in general:
1. i TOLD you so...
2. you NEVER listen...
3. why you ALWAYS do this?
4. i want a divorce. [don't say this if you don't mean it!]
woah woah, you might say after reading the title, this "yim" person is really arrogant. guess what? i am indeed. ;) haha, but i didn't mean to use that phrase to indicate my importance to the buddystumbler team. all three of us play specific and important roles. i simply wanted to point out my position on the team.
to give you a bit of my background, i am a female (i know it's not obvious from my name), and i am the ONLY female on the team. [it's harsh working with the other two guys. tsk tsk. :)] i am the second youngest/eldest member of the team (meaning i am in the middle age-wise). and i also rank second in a couple of other things, but i will keep those secret for now. [sorry, folks]
i am mostly responsible for the look and feel of the buddystumbler site (and this blog too). if you think the site looks nice ("nice" is enough for me; no need to go to "good" or "great" levels), i would say "thank you". if you think the site looks like crap, let me know how i can improve it. there are reasons why i am a software developer and not an artist. ;) the site has undergone at least 5 iterations of major/minor UI overhaul already. i know it's not perfect, but i think it has gotten better, and in the long run, i will need your feedback to make it better! :)
so how did i join the buddystumbler team? well, i was bullied [ahem, by the big guy] into it. heh...j/k. actually, han has had the idea for months. one day i expressed interests in working on something as a side, so han got all excited and showed me the prototype and i agreed to work with him. hmm, pretty simple eh?
it took the three of us months of hard work to get to this point, so i hope you guys will like AND use buddystumbler! [just click the link folks!]
until next time...
i went to live 105's not so silent night this friday and found myself right in the middle of the wildest mosh pit i've ever been apart of. it's been two days and i am still recovering from that event - my ears are still ringing, my knees are still sore from 6 hours of standing, and i am still only able to hear things at half volume.
in addition, i've also been pounding away at site5's servers and forums trying to get buddystumbler up. i feel like i've been banging my brain at this for the last 24 hours reading up on arcane configuration steps. i'm physically and mentally pounded silly.
around 3pm today, it started to pull up. as of this moment, things aren't perfect (yim and i are starting to weed the kinks out) - it's such a joyous feeling.
i started this project in earnest in february; yim and amit joined in may. things are finally starting to come together. its an odd dichotomy to feel so awful physically but so good inside.
as the three of us near the 'friends and family' launch of buddystumbler, i thought it would be worthwhile to pontificate about what success is. in a time when social networking sites are being swept up for outrageous sums of money, buddystumbler's metrics for success are modest.
for buddystumbler to be considered successful:
1. it needs to be completed. ideas are cheap, it is the execution of an idea to completion (even in the face of imminent failure) that is hard to come by. for myself, i've made far too many excuses in the past about why some of my past projects never materialized. in completing buddystumbler and going through the work of marketing buddystumbler with the limited budget we possess, we will learn much about what people on the web like and about what it takes to run a website. eventually, we will succeed in achieving our broader goal of creating software that people will use for their personal pleasure.
2. our charter users are willing to make a leap of faith. like all sites that rely on content, there is invariably the chicken-or-the-egg problem. in buddystumbler's case, how does one make new friends if there are few people on the system? our initial feedback has generally been positive. i can't even begin to count the number of times i've been told that 'if you can only get people to sign up, buddystumbler will be heavily used. ' because the three of us do not believe in pre-seeding buddystumbler with faux people (a tactic purportedly used by other social networking sites), buddystumbler needs to convince its initial set of users that the site is worth trying and that the intentions of the site are worth sharing with others. even if just a few people believe in the vision of what buddystumbler could be, then that is success.
