Author: CircleMe Team

Introducing the CircleMe iPhone app

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We’ve been talking about our new iPhone app on the blog, Twitter and Facebook pages. However, you might be wondering what it looks like, and more importantly, what’s so cool about it 😉 We’re writing this blog entry to introduce you to the CircleMe iPhone app!

The CircleMe app doesn’t only extend the CircleMe experience onto your mobile, but also allows for some pretty cool uses in real life. It also comes with a unique feature called ‘planting’ that we think will change the way you use CircleMe. If you haven’t downlaoded it yet, you can now by clicking below:

Ok, got your iPhones ready? Here we go!

CircleMe app on iOS

First Steps

As you open the CircleMe app, some screens will quickly explain how to use the CircleMe app. Then, you will be able to log in with your account or create a new one if you’re new to CircleMe (and if so, welcome!)

The Activity Feed

Right, ready to start circling? When you arrive at your activity page you will see the CircleMe activities, which is the equivalent of the Activities section on the web version. Here you will see activities related to the things you like, as well as those related to your friends.

CircleMe App – Activity feed

Navigation

If you want to go to any other section, you simply have to tap on the three horizontal lines on the top left corner and the Menu will appear:

CircleMe App – Menu

CircleMe Profiles

But you will be wondering how your beautiful CircleMe profile looks like on the iPhone, right? Well, we worked hard to make your profile as beautiful on iPhone as on the web version, and this is how it looks:

CircleMe App – Profile View

Yes, the images can be a bit small and become a bit tough to identify the likes that you (or others) added, which is the reason why we added the possibility to change the view so that it is easier to identify the likes.

CircleMe App – Profile View 2

Taking CircleMe into the real life : – )

Now, imagine what this would allow you to do… You know those times when you’ve been in a bookshop… and in front of sooo many things to chose, you just couldn’t remember what was that book you wanted to buy? Well, now with the CircleMe app, you can just bring up your phone, check your To Do’s, and voila!

Using the CircleMe app in the bookstore

You can obviously use this for many other things such as films, songs, etc. Or on a lazy Sunday where you’re wondering what you could do, you could check the many things you wanted to do when you didn’t have time but that you then added as To Do’s on CircleMe.

CircleMe App – To Do’s

Neat, isn’t it? But there is something we think is even cooler than that: What if you wanted to mark items on a map? Yes, we call it “Planting”.

Planting

Why on earth would you want that? Well, you might like pancakes, but what if you had some great pancakes in a cafeteria and you wanted to tell the world about it? You could also leave a comment with the plant such as  “Here you’ll find the best pancakes in London!”. You can think of many ways you could use these “plants”, for instance, you could plant your favorite romantic song on a very romantic spot for your partner to find 😉

iPhone App – Planting

Also, wouldn’t it be cool if you could discover new items as you walk around town? If you like pancakes, wouldn’t it be great if you could be alerted if someone had marked a pancake on the map? Yes, this too is possible with the CircleMe app and the planting feature.

CircleMe App – Explore

Exploring

But there is more to the CircleMe app: you can find new likes in the explore section, whereas on the web version, you will find the trending, most popular and featured likes.

CircleMe App – Explore

Inviting and finding friends on CircleMe

You will also be able to invite your friends from within the app, by clicking on the ‘Who to Trust’ section.

CircleMe App – Who to Trust

Account Settings and Privacy

Finally, you will be able to modify your account settings as well as your privacy settings from the ‘Account’ section.

CircleMe App – Account settings

We hope you enjoy the CircleMe app and if you have any feedback or questions, as per usual, do not hesitate to let us know! You can comment on this blog or find us on Facebook or Twitter

Media coverage round-up of the CircleMe launch and iPhone app!

/ CircleMe Team / 7 Comments

Dear Circlers,

As you will know, just a week ago, CircleMe went from closed to open beta and we released an iPhone app! We are happy to say that we’ve got great reviews from the press, and what is most important for us: good reviews from our users.

Why did we launch publicly? 6 months after starting our private beta, we reached a point where we thought that CircleMe was a great product and ready to be enjoyed by all users (as opposed to the closed beta users!). Therefore, we opened the gates to new users!

However, this does not mean that we will stop innovating and launching cool stuff 🙂 We’ll continue working hard (or even harder!) and make CircleMe more fun, social and innovative.

We’ve compiled some of the articles written about us that you can find below 🙂

Direct URLs to the articles:

TechCrunch by Mike Butcher @mikebutcher

TheNextWeb by Nancy Messieh @nfm

Wired.it by Silvio Gulizia @silviogulizia

Journaldugeek.com by Christelle D. @melhancholy

Genbeta by Guillermo Julian @gjulianm

TechTudo by Thiago Barros @tbarros89

isole24ore by Luca Tremolada @lucatremolada

Betakit by Darrel Etherington @drizzled

Fredzone by Fred @fredzone

Antyweb by Kamil Mizera @kamilmizera

Geekissimo by Andrea Guida @naqern

Bnext by Anon.

Fanpage by Claudio Gagliardini @cla_gagliardini

CircleMe needs your vote!

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Hi CircleMe’rs,

That’s right, we need your vote! We found out that were amongst the top 150 companies to be nominated for Top European Start-up at the London Web Summit (People’s Choice).

We’re in the top 9 so far and voting ends on Wednesday the 14th, so we can do it 🙂 If you want to support it, you can vote for us here: http://www.websummit.net/nominee/vote/ (it only takes one click and no registration is required!)

On behalf of the CircleMe team, many thanks!

Making what works… well, better: Announcing the Activity Page & Endless Scroll!

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They say if something works, why break it? Well, we disagree and think that if something works, why not break it and make it even better? We launched the Activity Board some weeks ago and we got some great positive feedback. The Activity board allows you to easily keep track of the activity related to your interests as well as the activity of your friends.

However, that is not our only new feature this week: we also implemented a endless scroll so that it is easier to navigate likes!

The new Activity Page

Yes! We decided to take that great (but perhaps hidden) feature and create a page for it on it’s own. So what is new in the Activity Page?

Out with the old…

In with the new!

The new Activity Page will allow you to easily read updates about the things you care about. And in case there are 2 or more activities for an item, you can easily click on the icon of the second person to see the activity!

Endless scroll

However, that is not all! We’ve also changed the different pages to show all your likes and to dos and now once you reach the bottom of the page more items will be loaded!

Endless Scroll

We hope you enjoy these new features and do not hesitate to leave your feedback! As usual, you can comment on this entry, on our Facebook fan page or on Twitter.

Announcing comments on all activities and the detailed Reach Score

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As you might have noticed, lately we have been rather quiet when it comes to new features. The reason for this is that we were working hard on a couple of new features that we think will change the way you use CircleMe (and make it much more Social and Fun!). We tell you about these two new features below:

Comments on all actions

Have you ever wanted to comment on a story shared on CircleMe or maybe when a friend added a new like you wanted to write something like “I didn’t expect that from you”? If you ever wanted to, then you will know that it was not possible, and perhaps you found it even a bit frustrating, right? Well, from today, this will not be a problem as we have launched the ability to comment on all activities on CircleMe. And yes, that includes adding likes or to dos, trusting CircleMe users, adding photos… even upvoting stories!

Now you can comment on all CircleMe activities!

We believe this will make CircleMe much more social and fun, don’t you think?

Detailed Reach Score

As you might know, we recently released the CircleMe Reach Score. Until today, the Reach Score allowed you to find out which categories you were the most influential in and how many people trusted you. From today, you will also be able to find out exactly what likes and To Do’s were influenced by your profile and also by your suggestions.

And that’s not all! You can even find out how many votes your views and stories received. In the new reach score, you will also find a list of all those CircleMe users who trust your tastes!

You will find the new Reach Score section by clicking on your Reach Score number on your profile

You will then have to click on View Details (this section can only be seen in your own Reach Score!)

Alternatively you can find the new Reach Score page from the Account section

We hope you enjoy these new changes. As you can see, CircleMe is becoming much more social and fun! As usual, if you have any comments, suggestions… do not hesitate to get in touch with us by replying on this blog entry, finding us on Twitter, Facebook or write directly to us at info@circleme.com

It was a Cold, Cool CircleMe weekend!

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Whilst most of Europe was busy keeping themselves warm, updating their statuses to complain about how cold it was, or what was most likely, doing both at the same time, the CircleMe Team got together in the beautiful little Italian town of Alba to work on making CircleMe better.

The CircleMe team gets together in the beautiful little town of Alba

 What? How?… Why?!

Right, let us explain: We promised we’d be working hard to bring many improvements to CircleMe, right? And February is a short month, right? So when we tried to fit all these improvements into the month of February, we felt like the result of a 1 + 1 sum didn’t quite reach 2. Thus, we decided to create some working days out of the blue (also known as a weekend).

As we had decided to transform a weekend into a working weekend, we thought we’d find a lovely place where the international and remote-working CircleMe team could get together, work hard and also have a great time.

We were demanding: Our destination would need to have great food, wine, and stunning views! (and this is what we got!)

When it came to deciding our destination, we had it extremely easy: As we recently released the Reach Score, it could only be fair that the CircleMe team member with the highest Reach Score should decide our destination, and so we trusted Elena. She pinned a place on the map and soon we would be en route to the beautiful little town of Santa Vittoria d’Alba.

Elena’s “54” Score Reach was a reason to trust her decision

Soon after arriving, we found ourselves already working hard on improvements to CircleMe, and discussing how we can improve the site.

Erik, Andrea and Antonio discuss technical improvements to our platform

Adina, Elena and Antonio discuss how to ensure the quality of CircleMe content is up to the standards our users deserve

Simina and Giuseppe work whilst trying to resist the temptation of eating all the great looking local food displayed on the wall

But it wasn’t only about working! This trip gave us a chance to get to know our colleagues better and have a great time together. In fact, since Alba is an area known for its great wine and food, well… we had no choice but to investigate those! Our verdict? Plenty of likes added on CircleMe!

A big toast to CircleMe users! (From left to right: Adina, Simina, Erik, Andrea, Giuseppe, Emanuele,Antonio, Elena and Gabriele)

Overall, we feel it was a great Cool, Cold CircleMe Weekend: Not only was it a great opportunity to advance on some of the improvements we want to bring you in February and March, but also allowed us to get people from different teams together to discuss how to make CircleMe better for you.

We say “Stay tuned for our announcements of improvements to CircleMe”, you say “Watch out Anto for that snow ball!”

We hope you enjoyed getting to know the CircleMe team. As we promised, we’re working hard on making CircleMe better and we want you to be part of it. So please stay tuned for new CircleMe improvements and do not hesitate to help us share ideas and feedback on how you think we could improve CircleMe!

Javier Galan
CircleMe Marketing Manager

Announcing the Reach Score, improvements to our To Do’s and more!

/ CircleMe Team / 2 Comments

Since February is a short month, we thought we had better make the most out of it by launching cool new features as soon as possible, so let’s get on with it! This week we’re announcing the launch of the Reach Score, wine.com integration, improvements to the “To Do” activity and a new homepage.

Announcing the Reach Score

CircleMe is all about True likes, interests and passions. You can suggest these to other users and they might find a new book, artist or even drink thanks to your profile, and if people trust you, they will be influenced by your tastes. Wouldn’t it be great if we came up with a way to measure how influential people are? Well, that is what we thought and so we came up with the Reach Score.

In fact, if you click on your reach score, it will show you how many tastes you influenced organised per category and how many people trust you on CircleMe. You can also see other users’ Reach Scores!

Expanding our Wine list

If you are a wine connoisseur, you might have been frustrated in the past that although some generic wines could be found, perhaps you couldn’t find those wines you really wanted to add on CircleMe. Yes, you could like “Sauvignon Blanc” but not your favourite brand and year. Well, we have now added an extensive list of wines from wine.com and you will most likely find exactly the wines you truly like on CircleMe.

Improvements to the To Do’s

Has it ever happened to you that after adding an item as a To Do you noticed you had already added it in the past? Then, you would have the same item twice in your To Do list. Annoying, right? Well, starting from today we’ve simplified this for you and when you check an item that you already added as a To Do, instead of showing a button to add it again, you’ll see a button to “Undo” the To Do.

New Homepage

You probably noticed some changes on the Homepage: We thought it would be great giving new visitors an idea of what there is to like on CircleMe and add a link to our “Stop liking, start circling video”

This is it for this first day of February that will certainly come full of cool new features for CircleMe users! We would really like to know your feedback about these updates, so feel free to share your feedback with us via Facebook, Twitter, commenting on this blog or mailing us to support@circleme.com.

Finding who to trust on CircleMe

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It’s Tuesday and that deserves an update with the changes on CircleMe: The CircleMe team has been working on some back-end improvements and other features we’re looking forward to announce as soon as they are ready, but there is a change on CircleMe you will notice. This is the creation of a new section on the CircleMe navigation bar: “Who to trust”.

As we announced last week on our blog, we moved the Neighbors section from the “me” page to the “Find Friends page”, where you could find Facebook or Gmail friends who are on CircleMe (or invite them if they are not on CircleMe yet!). You can also invite friends via email.

Since we know that this is very important in order to provide a great CircleMe user experience we decided to create a new section for it that can be found from the CircleMe navigation page: the “Who to trust” page. At the same time, we moved the Activity Board icon closer to the “Me” button.

This is what the new ‘Who to trust’ page looks like:

We hope this change improves your CircleMe experience and helps you find people to Trust on CircleMe!

CircleMe on Social Media

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As you might imagine, we are present on many different Social Media channels. However, you might not know exactly which channels we can be found, so we thought of writing a quick blog entry sharing the links to each of these channels and have a brief explanation of what you can expect from us in each one of these:

On Facebook: You want to relax on Facebook and keep in touch with things, right? Well, if you like us on Facebook you will find updates about fun stories you can find on CircleMe. You will also be able to participate in our contests and be part of the CircleMe community! Of course, we will update you of the release of important features on CircleMe

On Google Plus: Perhaps you use it to talk about things related to Social Media and be updated about the latest trends in this space? Well, if you circle us on Google Plus you will not only be updated about the latest CircleMe developments but we intend to have a more continuous conversation about these developments. Would you like to engage in a sincere conversation with CircleMe staff and influence the development of our platform? This is the right place for you!

On Twitter: You enjoy being updated about all the things happening out there, and you want to know as they happen? Following us you will find all this real time information from us: If something is happening on CircleMe right now, you can be certain you will be the first to know.

Of course, you might be interested in different kinds of information. Well, do not hesitate to follow the channels that interest you the most!

The “neighbours” moved, and that’s a story worth voting on!

/ CircleMe Team / 1 Comment

It’s Tuesday, which means the CircleMe team is bringing you cool new features to enjoy on CircleMe. Ah, yes… this blog post title sounds a bit odd. No worries, it will all make sense after reading this:

The “neighbors” moved!

No, we are not talking about our real neighbors (about whom we don’t have any complaints!) but those CircleMe users who have similar interests to you. As you might have noticed, there was a “Neighbors” section below the “Trusted” category.

The old positioning of the “Neighbours” section

As we said, they moved… but whereabouts? London? New York? Tokyo? Nope, nope, nope… the neighbors simply left the crowded “Me” page and moved to a more appropriate and spacious “Find friends” page.

New “Neighbors” location

Please take into consideration that in order to see this section of suggested CircleMe users, you need to have some likes!

Voting Stories

We believe that allowing users to express their preferences is fundamental. For this reason, we enabled voting features for views written on Item pages. However, those who enjoy this feature might have noticed that this feature was not available for other kinds of content, especially Stories. We are happy to announce that from today this has changed: you can now also vote up (or down!) stories shared about other CircleMe.

We think this will not only improve the CircleMe experience by allowing users to express their preferences, but also by allowing users to quickly see which stories related to a certain topic are the most liked by other CircleMe users.

We hope you enjoy these changes and please do not forget to share any feedback with us!