New Interface
After the last update, I expressed that we could have done better with the user interface. The major part of the last update was actually mostly invisible. It was a database architecture update to enable multiple communities. While we added some shiny graphics with web 2.0 highlights and reflections, the multiple communities did a number on usability.

So we jumped right back in to fix that, and what you have now is the result of a couple of hard weeks of development. We’ve made the user interface easier to use (I hope) and much more efficient on use of space. We’ve widened the page dramatically and streamlined the navigation.

New Communities
But that’s not all. The most exciting new feature is that we’ve released functionality allowing members to be designated as community managers. By the time you are reading this, we’ll have two new communities managed by two of our BUMPzee members. These members will have full control over their managed communities and will grow them in a similar manner that we have grown the existing Affiliate Marketing and SEO/SEM communities:

Jim Kukral will be managing a new How to be Successful Online Community, focusing on blogging and all-things making money online.

Sam Harrelson, publisher of CostPerNews.com will be managing a Next Generation Marketing community with a focus on Web 2.0 and new marketing technologies and strategies.

Thanks to Jim and Sam for helping us into the next phase of BUMPzee’s growth. If you have any interest in these areas, join them. And if you have a relevent blog, submit it.

Managed Communities
We’re excited to open up BUMPzee to members for the creation of their own communities. However, communities on BUMPzee are currently invite-only. We’re doing it this way to ensure quality of communities as well as quality of service. Controlled growth will help ensure both of those things. If you are interested in starting a community, please contact us with your ideas.

In the near future, we anticipate that we’ll have individuals creating many different types of communities such as:

• An individual’s personal community based on the blogs that he or she reads. Essentially, this person would be sharing his or her RSS reader and may form a community of people with the same interests.
• Communities based on Interest Groups: Online Marketing has been the focus of the initial communities, but the sky’s the limit. Any topic of interest can be made into a community, whether it’s photography, American Idol, cooking, or Internet Marketing.
• A community of friends and family. A community may be created around the interests of a group of friends and/or family.

Please stay tuned as we ramp up the service allowing the creation of more and more communities.

This entry was posted on Saturday, March 24th, 2007 at 9:20 pm and is filed under bumpzee. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.