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CircleMe User Interview #5: Camille Chatras

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One of the coolest things about CircleMe is all the different people who are using it to add their Likes. We love finding out more about you, and our series of user interviews is a great way to discover interesting CircleMe users. Here’s a very interesting interview with Camille Chatras. As you can see from her bio, CircleMe is Camille’s very first social network! Off to a great start, we think ; ) She has some great Likes and we hope you enjoy finding out more about her.

Camille Chatras' CircleMe profile

Who are you?

My name is Camille Chatras. I’m 36 and I live in Paris, but I travel a lot because of my job (Germany, Italy and Dubai most of all).

CircleMe is all about passions and things people love. If you could only choose 3 passions, what would these be? Why these 3?

Three passions in my life? That’s very difficult!

Chanel: Well, first of all as you can see from my profile, I’m a big fan and customer of Chanel and everything Chanel-related: collections (both prêt-à-porter and haute couture), accessories, shoes, make up and perfume. I love to follow everything they produce on Vogue and other glossy magazines and, if I can, I go to their fashion shows (not that I work for Chanel, my passion is genuine!).

Cooking and wine tasting: I don’t have much time to do either of them, but I love to experiment with ingredients and to personalize traditional French recipes. My boyfriend and friends are always very happy when I have time to organize a dinner party chez moi!

Cooking

Camille loves cooking for her friends

Movies and Theatre: The genres, movies and spectacles I like are displayed on my CircleMe profile!

Tell us something you discovered on CircleMe that you ended up loving?

One of the things I love discovering on CircleMe are the suggestions in the Explore section regarding books. Since I love to read in English, I really appreciate it. Also the books, music and movies I discover from other CircleMe users are always very useful. Before going to the movies my boyfriend always says “Look what you’ve got in your To-Do list!” He doesn’t want to use CircleMe though, because he doesn’t want to use any social network – this was the same for me before discovering CircleMe.

Books

Camille uses CircleMe to find interesting books to read

Tell us something you saw on CircleMe that you would love to do one day?

Cooking Thai food : -)

Thai Food

How did you discover CircleMe?

I discovered CircleMe because I read Forbes, and I read a great review on Forbes a few months ago.

What do you like about CircleMe the most?

The privacy on the site, item photos and the design. I also like how you can personalize your profile.

How do you imagine CircleMe will be in 2 years time?

More and more and more used than Facebook which, as I see from friends and family, is always full of crap : -)

Has Camille inspired you to tell us a bit about yourself? Got any questions about the site? Send the friendly CircleMe team a tweet, wall post, or an email (info@circleme.com) and we’ll get right back to you : -)

CircleMe User Interview #4: Brad Brooks

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We’ve previously spoken to CircleMe users from The Netherlands, from France, and from Guatemala. It’s great to speak to CircleMe users from all across the world, and as we found out in our infographic, the UK is one of the most active countries on CircleMe. This is a good reason to chat to one of users in the UK! So today we are sharing this interview with CircleMe user Brad Brooks.

Brad's CircleMe profile

Who are you?

My name is Brad Brooks. I’m a graphic designer based on the south coast of England in the lovely seaside town of Littlehampton. I also used to draw comics.

Brad Brooks

Brad drew his CircleMe profile image himself

CircleMe is all about passions and things people love. If you could only choose 3 passions, what would these be? Why these 3?

That’s pretty easy. My three passions would be Comics, Apple and Arsenal Football Club.

Comics: I’ve loved comics since I was a very small boy. I’m just obsessed with mechanics of how putting images into boxes and then putting them in sequence can be so evocative. As well as drawing them, I’ve also written about comics, including co-authoring a couple of books. I’m also fascinated about how they seem to be able to shift to meet the demands of new media models (from newspapers to books to screen).

Apple: I use Apple devices (Mac, iPhone and iPad) every day, both for work and for play, and I’m continually amazed about how well they work for me.

Arsenal Football Club: Arsenal not only stand for tradition and good sportsmanship, but under Arsene Wenger we play exciting, skillful football too. Players may come and go, but the Arsenal stands forever.

Tell us something you discovered on CircleMe that you ended up loving?

I’ve discovered lots of things that I’ve ended up falling in love with. As one of my passions is the internet, I’ve been particularly happy with the web app recommendations that CircleMe has shown me, and I’ve really gotten into Hacker News because of CircleMe.

Hacker News

Tell us something you saw on CircleMe that you would love to do one day?

I’d love to visit all of the street art that I’ve seen posted on CircleMe, particularly all of the Banksy pieces.

How did you discover CircleMe?

I downloaded the iPhone app and fell in love : -)

What do you like about CircleMe the most?
I love the sense of communal passion for the good things in life, and discovering new things to love. I’m also a big fan of the iPhone app. The UI of both the app and the site is attractive, intuitive and a delight to use.

How do you imagine CircleMe will be in 2 years time?
The same as today, only more so. I’m convinced the community will carry on growing, and with it, the engagement and utility of the site will only increase. It’s going to be exciting to be a part of it!

CircleMe User Interview #3: Rodrigo Hortschlaki

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As you use CircleMe, do you ever wonder about some of the users who are adding their Likes? We certainly do, and that’s why we’ve been bringing you interviews with a collection of some of the people who make CircleMe great : -) Today we have an interview with another great Circler: Rodrigo Hortschlaki.

Rodrigo's CircleMe Profile

Who are you?

My name is Rodrigo Hortschlaki, I’m a graphic design student from Guatemala City, Guatemala.  I also work as a content manager in a social media agency and love design, music and social media so much.

Rodrigo

CircleMe is all about passions and things people love. If you could only choose 3 passions, what would these be? Why these 3?

1. Design:  Because for me design is a diferent way of living.

2. Music: As Shakira says “Music is the soundtrack of our lives”,  I don’t know who I would be without any music in my life.  It’s terrible just to think of it :S

3. Social Media: 3 years ago when I was watching a Facebook keynote, someone came and told me I was wasting my time watching this stream and bla bla. Now I can say “JA! JA!” to that person, now I work with Facebook and many other social networks, its such a new way of work which I’m enjoying so much.

Tell us something you discovered on CircleMe that you ended up loving?   

I discovered a book called ‘Logo Design Love‘ by David Airey. It’s such an amazing book, I think every graphic designer should read it.

Logo Design Love

Tell us something you saw on CircleMe that you would love to do one day?

Well, each time I see Milan, Berlin or Barcelona in my Likes I start thinking about my next trip in 2013. Hopefully I can be there in December of next year  as that’s my personal goal.

What do you like about CircleMe the most?

What I love about CircleMe is how easy it is to use, and the variety of Likes you can find here. You can also find interesting people to talk to.

How do you imagine CircleMe will be in 2 years time?

I think there are gonna be new, different and exotic ways to Like things here. It’s gonna be great!

Rodrigo on jetty

And there we have it, now you know all about Rodrigo. Want to find out more about some CircleMe users? You can view past interviews here!

Are you a CircleMe user looking to tell us a bit about yourself? Got any questions about the site? Send the friendly CircleMe team a tweet, wall post, or an email (info@circleme.com) and we’ll get right back to you : -)

The latest addition to the CircleMe team!

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Hi! It’s James from the CircleMe team. You might remember me as I joined recently and have been keeping our blog updated with all the latest news. Today I’m pleased to announce I’m no longer ‘the new guy’ at CircleMe ;- )

On CircleMe there are hundreds of thousands of Likes, Plants and To-Dos and it’s super-important for us to make sure it’s of the best possible quality for you to enjoy. This is a very important responsibility, which meant we had to find the right person for the role. For this reason, we’re very excited that Anna Maria has decided to relocate from the beautiful city of Paris to join our team in the Milan office!

I could tell you more about our new content manager Anna Maria and her likes since we’ve both been part of the CircleMe community for a long time, however, I thought it would be very fitting for Anna Maria to tell us a bit about herself and why she’s excited to be part of the team.

Anna Maria

Our new Content Manager: Anna Maria

“I didn’t discover CircleMe by chance, but because I was looking for a different social network in which passions and interests would be more important than Photoshopped photos and number of friends. I was very excited to finally find a place on the web where one can meet people with similar interests and exchange opinions and I’m very excited to be here in Milan and participating in the CircleMe adventure! I’m been here just three days, but I’ve already understood that my number of Likes is going to rise very quickly; as a content manager I come across interesting items everyday, which I often suggest to my friends.

If you take a look at my CircleMe profile, you’ll see that I mostly have Likes about cinema and movies, plus 80% of my heroes are actors or film directors! But there are also some comic writers (more than half of my books are graphic novels!). Anyway, I think that the most interesting section of my likes is the ‘other’ category; maybe because I’m curious about many things and an expert about none! After all Circleme is the best place for curious people who wants to keep track of many different things at the same time.”

Anna Maria

Anna’s CircleMe profile

Introducing Plant Guides and our exciting partnership with Cibando

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Partnership With Cibando

We know that our users enjoy finding interesting Likes around town using the Plant feature on CircleMe. However, we thought we could make them even more interesting and exciting, so we put our heads to work on improving this feature to help our users discover more high-quality plants.

Plant Guides

Announcing Plant Guides

What we came up with is something ground-breaking for CircleMe: The announcement of ‘Plant Guides’. As you will know, Plants are Likes associated to real-world locations. Thus, ‘Plant guides’ are collections of plants provided by selected partners.

This is a very important moment for CircleMe as it opens the door to the CircleMe ecosystem and potential partnerships, allowing other companies to distribute their content with the fast-growing CircleMe userbase, whilst providing you with more interesting Plants to discover.

Partnership with Cibando

The first partner will be leading restaurant finder app Cibando, which will bring you a collection of the best restaurants in Italy. (You can find out more about this partnership in our Press Center) But that’s not all! We’ve also added 2 more Plant Guides: Art Masterpieces and Boutique shops.

On the CircleMe iPhone app (got the latest version?), navigate to the brand new Plants page from the Menu button and you’ll find all the Plants near you. Now you can select the Guides button and see our 3 new collections.

The Cibando Plant Guide is the tastiest of the 3 as it showcases some of the best restaurants in Italy. It is also the one that excites us the most due to this great partnership, so don’t forget to have a look when you’re not sure where to grab lunch!

Plants on a map

Tap on the map to view Plants in full screen

The Art Masterpieces collection includes some of the most famous works of art in the world, all planted at the galleries where you can see them. From Whistler’s Mother to The Starry Night, the best Art Masterpieces are now planted on CircleMe!

Plants on a map

With the Art Masterpieces Plant Guide you can view art on a map

Finally, the Boutiques Plant Guide will take you on a trip to some of the most exclusive shops around the world, from independent jewelers to high-end tailors, you can find them all in our collection of Boutiques.

We hope Plant Guides help you enjoy CircleMe better, and don’t forget that you too can Plant cool things for others to discover! Not sure how to add a Plant? Don’t worry, our tutorial video will help you out. 

Ah! And don’t forget to check out our Twitter and Facebook accounts where you will find the latest CircleMe news :- )

CircleMe User Interview #2: Vadim Vichniakov

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It’s time to post another interview with one of our CircleMe users! Previously our first CircleMe user interview was with Dick Stoppels, now it’s time for us to have a chat with another member of the CircleMe community : -)

Vadim's CircleMe profile

Who are you?

My name is Vadim Vichniakov, I’m a french business school student (SKEMA, merger between ESC Lille and CERAM). Russian born (Moscow) I came to France when I was 11 years old.

Vadim

Here’s Vadim in true world citizen mode

CircleMe is all about passions and things people love. If you could only choose 3 passions, what would these be? Why these 3?

1. Technology, IT, Social Media: I can’t even explain how it came to me. I strongly believe we are living an extremely exciting technological and social media revolution. I deeply want to be part of it.

2. Music: because it’s a way of living, I’m quite eclectic about it. For instance when I work I usually listen to some classics but I can switch in a blink to some inde, rock, electro… it depends, I believe there’s always appropriate music for fun, work, dancing, etc.

3. Traveling: I had the chance to live in Moscow, St Petersburg, Paris, Juan les Pins, Shanghai.

These three because I can’t conceive living without discovering new people and cultures… I’ve always traveled, I’m kind of a “worldwide citizen” ahah!

Tell us something you discovered on CircleMe that you ended up loving?

I discovered the Visual.ly service, thanks to a suggestion.

How did you discover CircleMe?

I discovered CircleMe thanks to one of Robert Scoble‘s tweets about social media trends.

What do you like about CircleMe the most?

I like the UI, its neat design and simplicity. Most of all it can be an incredible source of inspiration.

Paris CircleMe user meetup

Here’s Vadim second from the left at our recent CircleMe meetup in Paris. Click the image to find out more about the evening :- )

How do you imagine CircleMe will be in 2 years time?

I believe CircleMe will gain a big community and become a famous social network. Big groups could be interested in acquiring its workforce and patterns (Google: to improve their the Google+ UI / Facebook: to enhance “likes” and “interests” experience)

Are you a CircleMe user and want to share your story like Vadim did? We’d love to hear from you! Send us an email at info@circleme.com and stay tuned to our Twitter and Facebook for more user interviews : -)

CircleMe celebrates the London Olympics!

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Here at the CircleMe London office we can’t wait for the opening ceremony of the 2012 Olympics tonight, so to fill the time we made some images celebrating CircleMe! If CircleMe were organizing the London Olympics, we would have changed a few things…

The CircleMe Olympic torch

The CircleMe torch travels across the country as CircleMe users plant their passions

The CircleMe Olympic logo managed to fit in well with the previous design

Our extra-large CircleMe light show was the centerpiece of the fireworks at the London Eye

Of course, the Olympics start at CircleMe o’clock

Be sure to check the CircleMe Twitter account throughout the Olympics as we will be sharing lots more photos of our #circlemeolympics

Using the neighborhoods feature

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One of the best kept secrets of our app is the awesome neighborhoods feature. Not sure what it is? Well, if you want to stay notified about all of the plants in a location, you can track the neighborhood on CircleMe. This means that whenever anybody plants something publicly you will automatically see them in your activity feed. It’s a great way to find out more about the city or town you live in.

So how can you start tracking the neighborhoods that matter to you? Well first of all you’ll need the CircleMe iPhone app. Now just visit the Explore page  and tap on ‘Planted’. If you have Location Services enabled the app will automatically display the Plants nearest to you. Scroll down the list of plants and at the bottom of the page you’ll see a button labelled ‘Track this neighborhood’ . Now staying in touch with all the activity near you is just a tap away 🙂

Tracking a neighborhood

Tracking a neighborhood using the CircleMe app

You can find a list of all your tracked neighborhoods from the Account page. Here you can delete any locations you aren’t interested in any longer and even add new locations.

Viewing a list of tracked neighborhoods

How to view a list of all your tracked neighborhoods

If you have any questions about the neighborhood feature, or anything else to do with CircleMe  you can ask us by commenting on this post, or by contacting us through our Twitter account or Facebook page!

– James Cook

CircleMe Summer Marketing Intern

Get more from your likes with Bompiani Editori

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CircleMe is all about interests, passions, likes… However, it’s not just about collecting them: It’s about getting more from these likes and being able to enjoy them.

What do we mean by that? It might be enjoying interesting conversations, or finding out about interesting articles related to your likes. Also browsing photos, watching videos, and being able to listen to samples of artists you discover on CircleMe.

But we don’t want to stop there. We want to give you more about what you care about the most. For this reason, we’ve started to work with Bompiani Editori to bring you free chapters of books related to your likes! The first books you’ll be able to enjoy are: “Amy Ma Figlia” by Mitch Winehouse and “L’Amore È La Cura” by Elton John.

Amy WinehouseElton John

How does it work? When you go to the page of either Amy Winehouse or Elton John, on the top right corner you will see a notice indicating that you can download the book. During the next months we’ll be working hard to help you enjoy your likes more, so stay tuned for more news!

Screenshot

Please not that this goodie is currently available to Italian users only. If you’re having problems downloading any of the books, please send an email to support@circleme.com

Introducing the new activity page!

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By now you might already know the drill: When the CircleMe team goes silent, it means we’re working hard at improving CircleMe and launching new features, and now is one of those times! We’ve really excited to announce the launch of the new activity page!

For a while now we have wanted a way to show you all the great activity related to your likes as well as the activity of your trusted friends. Well, today we released the brand new activity page, and it has some great new features we really hope you’ll enjoy.

Brand new visual style

The new activity page makes it easier than ever for you to discover new likes and users on the site. Now we show you a cascade of interesting content, meaning that CircleMe looks better than ever. We also group activity stories together under each item, meaning that the site is easier to read than ever before, and you can now choose the category of the items for which you want to follow the activity.

The new activity page shows activity in the cascade-style

The new “Everyone’s” Feed

One of the most exciting new features of the new activity page is this very special feed of everything that is happening on CircleMe. Now by clicking on the “Everyone’s” option you will be able to see updates from every user. You will also be able to select the category of the latest activity you want to follow. Although we just launched this feature, we are already finding this a great way to discover new likes! 🙂

You can now check the latest activity on CircleMe by all users on all items! And filter by category : – )

You might have seen this cascade of likes on our homepage… now you can also access it when you are logged in, and like new things and instantly mark them as To Do’s.

You can now access the latest likes even when you’re logged in!

Social updates box

Another great new feature is this new box to the left of the activity page. We now show you some users you might want to trust, along with who your existing friends are trusting. This makes it really easy to find interesting new users on CircleMe.

Social Activity Box

We really hope this changes help you have a better CircleMe experience and, as per usual, if you have any feedback, suggestions or comments, do not hesitate to comment on this blog, contact us on Twitter or Facebook or send us an email to info@circleme.com 🙂