Woo hoo! Props to the article today that featured on Gizmodo on Freally. Thanks to all our users who have been supporting us. We’ll continue to do our best. :)
ttp://www.gizmodo.com.au/2010/10/freally-wants-you-to-give-away-your-stuff-to-a-good-home/
Freally is not a horse, so we can’t really whip it to make it run faster, but thanks to a number of optimizations we have implemented on Freally over the last week, you should now experience a faster Freally experience. We are continuing to innovate and implement friendly changes to make things better for you. There are more to come! :)
Last night a BBC documentary “How many people can live on planet earth” was aired. It was a fascinating, at the same time, an alarming show about how we are treating our very home; planet earth. It gives me a new sense of purpose for Freally. Doing our small part in saving the planet.
There’s a mantra going around for the start-ups, which reads “Less is more”.
While working on Freally and its various components, we often had to learn this philosophy the hard way by implementing something, only to realise later that it is rather redundant or too “heavy” on the core features of the product.
In the last few months, Freally has grown steadily, attracting visitors from all parts of the world and during that time we added a number of features to cater for all sorts of usages.
Although this exercise was fine in itself, we realised it was adding some burdens to the site itself and it was suffering obviously in loading time, user experience, site speed and performance.
So we have decided to streamline our Freally and really take the “less is more” concept to our heart by getting rid of some of the features. I know, this was a painful thing for us too, but in the end I think we have a more efficient site that is easier to use for our users.
Some of the features that are removed (e.g. translation, API) may appear again in the future, but we will do our best to ensure that they do not slow the site down. Meantime, we hope you enjoy the newly updated Freally.
We are welcoming some important updateas to Freally site at the moment and will begin to roll out these changes to a wider audience very soon. We are excited, because it will streamline and simplify the site structure as well as the user experience dramatically. Thanks for all the feedback and we look forward to announcing the changes very soon! Stay put!
Have you tried setting up your profile on Freally? It is the easiest way of getting the BEST out of Freally.
You log-in to your Freally account, and then go to “My Profiles” > “View/Edit notification settings”.
In here, you will be able to set up “alerts”, which are sent any time an item you want is posted around you.
For example, if you are after “TV”, you can set the keyword to “TV” so that next time someone posts “TV” around you, we email you immediately!
You can also set to receive our newsletters, which are filled with important updates and goodies that are going around Freally.
Excellent? Excellent!
As items are trickling in from all around the world, we are still dilligently working to improve the site. We have pushed through some Freally re-design work for easier navigation, plus a couple of important bug fixes! HAPPY! :)
Freally has recently come first in the AusInnovation Idea Festival and yes, we are humbled and proud at the same time.
Just wanted to put the link up, so that you can at least see the faces behind the Freally. :)
The article is in : http://www.optimice.com.au/
The article can be downloaded here : http://www.optimice.com.au/SpigitAusinnovtionstory.pdf
The actual competition page : http://ausinnovation.spigit.com/homepagelight
Thanks everyone!
Many of us have seen the above humourous diagram before. It’s quite funny (and silly) how a single task can be understood in so many different ways. But when it comes to a project that influences many parties, then it isn’t too funny anymore.
At Freally, we are doing our best to focus on one thing and that is how our users interact with Freally; and that involves a host of things - how users view Freally, how they operate its features etc. Ultimately, everything comes back down to our users.
With a plan to push out as many nifty features as possible, we sometimes have to think what would be the best set of features to implement first and release so that our users get most out of - and we have been able to do this thanks to the support of our faithful users.
This week we have released a few important updates to Freally that will hopefully make things much easier for you!
Hope you enjoy Freally and continue to make our environment a better place by recycling!
We’ve been busy, again. As we continue to study the whole concept of item-exchanging-online, we are beginning to see the ups and downs, do’s and don’t’s, good and bad approaches and what will appeal to users. It all comes down to putting ourselves in our users shoes.
We have also pushing out many of the changes fearlessly. We have a long way to go, but our aim is still clear and conclusive; that is to raise the awareness of recycling and make the experience of item exchange as seamless as possible.
One big feature for this past week was allowing our users to message other users about the item in any given point of the “item-life-cycle”. That is, you can message the owner or the receiver and ask any questions in regards to the item that you are after. We have made it so that it nicely collates different conversations in threads, so as an owner, you can see what others have been asking you about the item, and receivers can track the history of their questions.
We are also releasing some of the statistics on our users and the status on the recycling. We introduced what we call “Freally score” to give users an idea of how they are doing in terms of recycling.
So, while we have a long way to go, please continue to support Freally by telling your friends about us and together, we can make this place a better world to live in!
