make new friends and meet people online: out of beta and into the great beyond

It has been quite a while since I made a post of depth. Like other members of the buddystumbler team, the summer has proven to be quite busy on the professional front making it hard to squeeze time to blog about the buddystumbler entrepreneurial experience. When we have had the time, we've been working tirelessly on the revision of the site you see today: the official release of buddystumbler which we hope will allow people to make new friends!

Our beta began last December, and in the ensuing 10 months we have:

1. Launched polls to gather usability feedback
2. Experimented with different marketing schemes to build a diverse demographic
3. Tweaked the buddystumbler concept to better meet the needs of our users

With the new look and feel, we hope to build a site that addresses usability issues we faced during the beta and to provide a foundation for new features that are forthcoming before we close at 2008. It has been a great ride so far, and for those users who have stuck by us since the beginning - Thank you! As usual, feel free to buddy any of the team up; we like to meet people online and all feedback is welcome.

Here's our press release:

Buddystumbler has announced its official launch after months of beta testing.

Buddystumbler.com is a new, revolutionary way to make new friends—it is the only social networking site that is based on existing instant messaging (IM) networks. With IM clients such as AOL, Yahoo, MSN or Google, you can meet people online through exchanging screen names. Users create profiles that include photos, a description, and interests to show others what they like. Furthermore, buddystumbler.com provides a powerful interface to enable search by user profile, interest and location.

“There are millions of users on existing IM networks chatting with known friends, colleagues and family members. Until buddystumbler.com there was not an easy way for these users to find other like-minded people to chat with.” said Han-Shen Yuan, founder of buddystumbler.com.
By developing buddystumbler.com, Yuan found a way to enable chatting on a new and more personal level. Buddystumbler.com provides a community of Internet users to exchange screen names so you can communicate with new people for free online chat.

“One of the biggest differences between us and other social networking sites is that you do not have to log onto the website constantly to meet new people. You simply create a profile and make new friends using your existing IM client.” said Yuan.

Recently, buddystumbler has enabled more comprehensive profiles. Users can now include their latest blog entries from Xanga, Myspace, LiveJournal or Blogger. The buddystumbler interface leverages the Web 2.0 paradigm and is built using the Ruby on Rails framework. Yim Lee, UI architect and co-founder of buddystumbler.com, has refined the interface based on feedback from thousands of users after months of beta testing.

Since its beta launch, buddystumbler.com has launched its new interface to create a revolutionary way of social networking. “The production launch is a milestone for the whole team and we hope to continue helping others make connections through instant messaging,” said Yuan. “Our motto is ‘I search therefore IM’. Enabling people to search and establishing new connections with others is our mission. Happy stumbling!”