boxedup.com blog

OK. We know we’ve neglected the blog since boxedup launched (sorry), but it’s been for good reasons, we promise!

We’ve been working continuously on enhancing existing functionality and adding new useful features and tools. So here’s a quick summary.

When you click through to your account you’ll see that you’ve now got a new homepage so you can easily see who’s finding and adding what in your network, and there’s a refined profile page so that people visiting your boxedup account can get a quick view of what you’re into. There’s a new messaging system so you can easily send messages to your boxedup friends when you’re on the site (and want to talk product stuff). And you can also now leave your funny or helpful comments on your friends lists. Lists now have three settings as far as privacy levels are concerned: public, friends only, fully private; so you control who sees what. And there’s also a new tool that allows you to easily send out boxedup invites by pulling in contacts directly from your address book.

We’ve extended the shops functionality to the user level, so on your pages you’ll see a shops tab which shows all the shops that you have things from on your lists. We’ll be working to build this out further; ultimately we want it to be a place where you can keep track of all your favourite stores and sites, be able to see when good stuff from those sites has been added to boxedup by others, and to be able to see who else is enjoying using the same sites and stores as you.

And we’ve been working to make it easy to embed your boxedup lists into the places that you use and love most on the web, whether that’s your blog, your social network profile or somewhere else. So we’ve now got  a boxedup Facebook app (see pic below) and a new set of Flash widgets to plug into your blog or MySpace profile, or any other open social network or site that accepts Flash (see the skinny version over on the left and the fat version below). There are a load of announcements in the pipeline about other social networks opening up and following the Facebook lead, so as that happens we’ll be looking at what the best way is to integrate boxedup into these platforms.

boxedup Facebook app (profile view)      boxedup Flash widget

So whether you’re using boxedup as your online shopping list, to help you keep tabs on stuff as you’re window shopping on the web, to track stuff you want to get for others, as your gift/wish list, or to just share cool things that you’ve found with friends, we hope you like the latest changes!

There’s plenty more to come, including a new form for adding products to your list which will have new standard options to allow you to grab images when we haven’t been able to grab them automatically (and we’ll be working on the automatic image grab too) - we know it’s annoying when you can’t get the image that you want.

We’ve been getting a great flow of feedback from lots of people, and it’s really appreciated. So if you’ve got any thoughts or comments about the site, or if you just want to get in touch, then please do! You can use the feedback form on the help and info page or you can email us on feedback [at] boxedup dot com.

And we’ll definitely be making more frequent posts about developments and changes as we make them!

So thanks for using the site. And if this is your first time coming to boxedup please sign-up!

Leading up to the launch of boxedup we wanted to make sure that as people found about what we were doing they could register their interest to find out more and be told when we were live. So we created a splash page that sat on the boxedup.com URL where people could leave us their contact details.

We also managed to get some promo through the new blognation site (definitely worth a visit if you’re interested in developments in the internet startup space), and we used a mysterious looking bit of creative to get people curious.

Well, it all seemed to work, and we got a good number of people registering to find out more. We were also excited to get a nice bit of comment on the creative itself on Fred Destin’s blog (of Atlas Ventures). Thanks Fred!

So once the initial launch-related frenzy was over we let everybody who’d left their details know, and we sent them an email giving them a bit of a heads-up on what boxedup is all about (and encouraging them to sign-up, of course!).

As we’ve been getting quite a few people asking for a bit more boxedup background info, and since we haven’t got round to an ‘about’ page on the site yet, we thought we’d post the email here.

So here it is!

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Thanks for registering to find out more about boxedup.com – the lights are now on, and we’re ready to rock and roll!

So what is boxedup.com then?

Well, it’s essentially a place where you can keep track of all the things that you want to get. It can be anything from anywhere (any website or online store), whether you’re into music, books, gadgets, clothes, tin robots (!) or anything else!

It’s something you can just use yourself or that you can share with other people. We think its fun and interesting to share the experience, so we’re making it easy to keep track of what your friends are finding and adding. We’ll also be building out groups, so that you can find people who are into the same stuff as you, and they can do the leg work in finding cool and
interesting things!

Why?

Well, we got bored of:

• finding great stuff that we wanted to get and then losing track of these things in a sea of bookmarks, desktop links and scrawled notes
• having lists scattered all over the place at different sites/stores
• using a generic social bookmarking tool which meant that all the stuff that we wanted was jumbled up with all our other bookmarks
• being bought stuff that we really didn’t want to (and boxedup should help to put an end to that experience!)
• not having an easy way to get ideas and inspiration about things to get, and also not having a place to chat about the stuff that we wanted, and were into, with our friends and people with the same interests
• generally not having a useful tool to keep track of what we wanted and where we found it

So we wanted to transform the way in which people track what it is that they want to get, as well as the things that they like the look of and think are cool. And we wanted to turn it into a fun and social experience. We wanted to create something that hooked tightly into the way that you use the web, allowing you to easily add things to your lists as you’re searching, surfing and shopping. And we also wanted to make it easy to share what you’ve found with your immediate community and with other
people who are into the same stuff as you. Enter boxedup.com! We want boxedup to be the hub for all your activity relating to things that you want.

What’s next?

For us, we’ve got lots more to do and loads of ideas about how to make the site even more useful and fun. And it’s not just about the site. Like a lot of people these days, we’re big social networking fans, so we’re going to make it possible to integrate boxedup into your social network using our widgets. And we’ll be looking to integrate into other environments where our users spend their time.

For you, we hope that we’ve caught your interest and that you’ll sign up! You can do that by joining here. We’d love to welcome you on board.

And if you have any ideas, comments or suggestions about the boxedup site, or want to get in contact with us or find out more, then drop us an email!

Thanks for your interest.

Chris & Jeremy – co-founders

You’re probably wondering what’s going on if you’ve gone online expecting to visit the gifttagging site. Well, it’s evolved, and its now boxedup.com!

Gifttagging was launched last year as a bit of an experiment, and the good news is that it’s been a successful one. It showed us that people want a tool to help them track the things that they want to get, and to be able to share this with other people. What we also realised is that it goes way beyond being about gifts – it’s about shopping, it’s about adding all those things that you like the look of to your list as you come across them, and it’s about using it as a tool for yourself as well as being about being able to share it with other people. And it can also be about being part of the community and seeing what others are adding and are interested in.

The boxedup site takes the concept to the next level, and is a faster and functionally better site. We’ll be making regular improvements and upgrades to the boxedup site to provide you with something that does all the things that you want to be able to do. As part of that we’d love to hear from you if you’ve got a comment, idea or suggestion. Just send us an email at feedback [at] boxedup [dot] com, or use the comment form that we’ve now got on our help page.

If you’re an existing user you’ll find all of your lists as they were. The name of the default list is now ‘Things I want’, and, as before, if you want to create new lists for specific types of things then you can do that.

So here are some of the other key changes:

• We’ve turned it into a more social experience – you’ll find an automatically generated mini profile when you click through to your lists; and further down the same page you’ll see a couple of streams of activity showing all the things that you’ve done recently, and showing what the people in your network have done recently
• As well as being able to search for things that other people have added to their lists by individual item, we’ve added a shop search facility to help you find sites and shops that have got the types of things that you’re interested in; this is something that we’ll be looking to build out further (and is currently work in progress), including giving you the ability to build out your own directory of the shops and sites that you like to use, so that they’re easy to find time and again from your boxedup account

And a couple of things to note:

• You no longer need to remember your username when logging in, just use your email address and password
• Update the toolbar buttons that you have – just go to one of your lists and you’ll see a box called ‘Things to do’ and in that there’ll be a link through to the right buttons for you based on the browser you’re using

And we’ve been getting the obligatory questions about when there will be a Facebook application! Well, we’re almost there and we’ll post a message here when it’s available! And there’ll also be a super cool flash widget coming out shortly.

We’re really excited about the new site, and we hope that you like it and enjoy using it! And if you have any feedback or thoughts, then please do send them through.

The boxedup team

For those of you keeping an occasional eye on the gifttagging blog you’ll know that there’s been a lack of blog activity recently (!), but that’s all about to change (and infact we’re using a new blog)! And current site users will probably have noticed the improvements that have been taking place in the last couple of weeks, meaning that the site is now faster and works better.

‘What’s going on?’, we hear you say! Well after a bit of a lull in things being done to the site we’ve now got new-found momentum, and are going to be really pushing forwards with making the site the essential tool for everybody in the world to keep track of, and get, the things that they want, to share their lists with people who want to get them stuff, and to come together to find interesting and cool stuff that other members of the gifttagging community have discovered.

And there’s more! We’ve got a new member of the team, and co-owner, onboard who’s going to be pushing the site forwards with us - Chris Osborne. Chris has got the same passion for creating a tool that will ensure that everybody gets what it is that they want, and has fun in the process. So it’s great to have him here.

We’ve got lots of plans as we hit this new phase. And we obviously want to hear from all of you too! So if you’ve got any comments, thoughts, or suggestions, or anything else that you want to share, then we’re waiting to hear from you! You can email us at letterbox [at] gifttagging.com, or you can email me at jeremy [at] gifttagging.com and Chris at chris [at] gifttagging.com.

Thanks to everybody who’s been with us on the journey so far - we hope that you’re finding the site useful and fun to use, and we’re looking forward to being with you on the next stage of the journey.

And please spread the gifttagging word!