Business

I just got back from an insightful trip to Miami for FOWA (Future of Web Apps). This was like 4 yrs of college, with a major in How to Build a Great Web App Company, rolled in to 2 days. My biggest takeaway was listening to what you, the users want! It was beat in to our heads! I have some good ideas on what the employees of 10to1 can do to make the service better. But….I can place all my chips on the bet that you have MUCH better ideas! I want to pick your brain. Here is what I am wondering:

• Do you want us to cut out the reporting of your activity on the site under your user listing?
• Should we remove adding descriptions in items, list?
• Remove commenting on individual items?
• Change the voting algorithm to a +1, -1 versus division?
• What else do you want to us to do to make it a better experience?

The best quote from FOWA (and there were SOOO many) “Customer support is sales.”

P.S. If you don’t want to leave comments here..tweet us @tentoone or me @koreyb.

Hi everyone,

2008 was an exciting year for us at  10to1 and we want to thank everyone involved in helping to make the launch of the site a success. I thought I would recap some of the year’s highlights.

- Site launched on July 25, 2008

- Traffic up to 15k visits/month and 33k page views/month

- Launch of Seeds

- Launch of Buttons and Widgets

- Social media networking through Facebook and Twitter added

- Facebook app launched

- Facebook Connect launched

It has been a great start and a fun company to be involved in. Thanks for making 2008 a great year!

Korey

I have to start somewhere! The private list feature has been a great addition to 10to1. Amongst friends, it has given us a cool forum to talk about who was the best dunk ball player or where was the best place to hang out back in the day. But..I think there is a business use in this tool. How can use this tool within your company? Get input on a new project? Consensus on a new hire..etc?  I’d like to hear your thoughts!

It has been an amazing ride since my last progress report!  I am having a great time meeting new users and having conversations with them about how we can make the site better. Here are the latest stats:

• 400 users (up 700%)
• 235 public lists (up 88%)
• 8 private lists 
• 390 star votes (up 95%)
• 14,872 list item votes (up 645%)
• 1507 comments (up 1100%)

My friends and I have been busy the last few days shooting jokes and jabs at each other on the new private list feature.  Everyone has to try this…invite your friends, family and loved ones to create a list to share in. You can create a list about past memories, competition or who’s the greatest at a particular sport/event/talent. The options are only limited by your imagination! Private lists are incribly addictive…I hope you have fun with them!

Top 5 Reasons to Create a Private List

1. Find out who’s the best!
2. Trash talk.
3. Be reminded of past events.
4. Engage with your friends and family.
5. Let your voice be heard!

The design process has been a bit more time consuming than I thought.  We have gone through a few different looks and we are close to picking a launch design. I wanted to make sure we nailed it, as design and usability are a big part of a website’s success.  Below are our current design ideas.

Notes concept:

Winter concept:

Politics concept:

Voting Concept:

Finally, finally….starting to see some traffic from search engines.  I am learning to be patient as we build up the community and content.  It hasn’t been easy, but I am encouraged by the traffic that Google is beginning to send us.  It is only a fraction of our total traffic, but I will take it! Eventually it should be around 50% of total traffic.

An upward ticking graph is great to see!

I am so excited to show the first iteration of the new home page design. We hired a top notch designer from San Francisco to work with us on a complete redesign of the site.  You will see these changes over the next 3 weeks.  Our goal is to make the site easier to use, participate and navigate through great usability and design.

Expect a revised logo, layout, voting button, features and blog.

10to1 new home page design

We have been very hard at work taking in a lot of good advice and trying to pump out the best product we can for you!  Here are some of the recent additions:

• We tightened up the design on posts, removing a lot of white space.  I think it makes the lists look immensely better!
• You can now re-order lists from #1 (Most Favorite) to #10 (Least Favorite) instead of #10 to #1…pretty cool huh!?
• Recommendation email will now be sent out every 2 weeks.
• We added many different ways to get updates on the site through RSS and email with Feedburner.
• WIKI edits, you can now make suggestions to our editors for any content edits on the lists.  More of this to come…
• Some BIG design changes coming up…

If you haven’t heard about these, please visit us:

Facebook Fan Page

Twitter

As always, please let us know if you have any feedback!

10to1.com, a social voting site, announces their new 10to1 Button, which provides an easy way to add voting and social networking to your site or blog. The button is one line of code that you add to your blog, website or article that quickly and easily introduces social voting and interaction to your readers. Because there is a lack of interaction on most sites, adding the 10to1 voting button quickly gives your users an easy way to give feedback on what matters to them.

Adding the button quickly changes the value of your pages and site. When users visit your page and like an article they can vote it up and share the article with others that might find it interesting. The tool is great for finding out what your users like and don’t like. Blog owners can quickly tell if the articles they are writing resonate with their users.

“Most blogs and article sites seem static, they are lacking participation.” said Korey Bachelder, President of 10to1, Inc. “Adding a 10to1 button to your blog will quickly allow your users to get social with only a click of the mouse. Voting is a nice step between anonymity and writing comments. People still like to be hidden on the web…this is a nice way to pull users out of the dark that may be hesitant about sharing their thoughts on your site.”

Best Social Networking Site (as ranked by 10to1 users)
10. Perfspot
9. Habbo
8. Orkut
7. Hi5
6. Friendster
5. Bebo
4. Myspace
3. Facebook
2. Flixster
1. LinkedIn

10to1.com is a website destination that allows users to create, comment and vote on lists for any category. The lists become more powerful and resourceful with each vote as users collectively create the best list based on individual opinions. The company is headquartered in Chandler, Arizona.