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Back on Track

We hope you are enjoying the summer wherever you are. On our side of the world, temperatures have reached a scorching 105 degrees fahrenheit both in Greece and Cyprus.

We have had a bit of a slow start with regards to getting the new features up and running but we are back on track with our developers and should have those updates for you soon. We have responded to a few bug reports, most of which have been fixed with ease.  We are working to have them all squashed quickly which will allow us to focus full force on getting the new features out. First up will be thumbnails and the embedding of lists followed by much more.

We have great things in store and our number one priority is getting them to you. Thanks for using Listiki and thanks for your patience as we put all our efforts into bringing you a great product.

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Posted 15 days ago by Davina Economou  

A note from Listiki

It has been a good couple off weeks for us here at Listiki. We were so pleased to see that we had been featured in TechCrunch and LifeHacker both of which we hold in high esteem so this was a highlight for us! Naturally, there was a surge in traffic as more people became aware of Listiki from these two big boys of tech blogs but also from numerous smaller blogs which we are thankful for.

Some of you may have realised that we went down a couple of times the previous week but we were able to get things under control and managed to get through the sudden increase in traffic.

We have been receiving some very nice comments from all our lovely users and we thank you for taking the time to let us know you appreciate Listiki as well as letting us know your thoughts and ideas - we are taking all your comments on board.

Here’s just one of the comments that made us smile -
“Since I personally make lists of all kinds of things when I found Listiki I thought I died and went to heaven. -@beasocial1
Thank you and thanks to everybody that has been sending us messages via our Get Satisfaction Feedback tab on the site. This is what makes it all worth it. We are so excited because the reaction has been immense and this is just the beginning. We have plenty more exciting features to come and should be pushing a couple of these out in the next few days.

In the mean time, here’s our top 3 lists for the week:

1. The 1000 things everyone should do before they die - started by Heather Brockman
This is a great idea for a list to get people involved and start contributing. There’s 10 things on he list so far so just 990 to go!

2. Best list of collaboration-related sites and books - started by @KareAnderson          

Interesting (and extensive) list of reads such as such as Moving from Me to We and Extraordinary Groups. Thanks @KareAnderson

3. If I were President I would... - started by @BigQid
My personal favorite! It’s interesting to see what the public would do if given the chance to be president. @BigQid is the creator of the list and sole contributor so far. I’m curious to see how this one escalates.

Ok, that’s all from us for now. Why not head over to Listiki and create your own list now?

 

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Filed under  //  favorite lists   Listiki   update  
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Posted 25 days ago by Davina Economou  

This Weeks Favorite Listikis

As the lists have started to pour in, we have decided to feature our favorite ones in a list right here on our blog.
 
Here are our very first favorites:
 
 
Paul Graham is a well known programmer, and programming language designer and essayist. He is co-founder of Y Combinator which provides seed funding to startups, particularly those that are more tech-oriented. His website now consists of over 100 essays. This Listiki consists of those considered to be the best ones. There were over 100 people on this list simultaneously within the first hour of submitting it!
 
 
Aalto Venture Garage is a new seed venture accelerator to catalyze world changing startups form Aalto University, Finland.  @lindaliukas started this list to get your opinion on speakers and themes to be featured at the Aalto Garage 2010-2011. We like the way she thinks.

3. Favorite True Blood Vamp by Vanja Arsenov Schleifer

 
I couldn't resist this one. I am a huge fan of True Blood and Vanja has started a list of our favorite vamps.

Remember that Listiki = list + wiki, so you can go in and add your own items to lists, move things around if your disagree with ranking or even delete items you think should totally not be on that list at all. Have fun.

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Posted 1 month ago by Davina Economou  

One Month On, New List Page

Wow! It’s already been a month since Listiki launched for all! During this time we were really able to get a grasp of the way you were using Listiki, what you loved about it and what you felt needed some work.

We are happy to announce that a new list page has been launched today. It displays a simpler layout, which emphasizes the ‘drag and drop’ functionality that allows you to start contributing instantly.

We’ve added a more complete sidebar where you can get information about a specific Listiki, the original creator, how many people have contributed to it, and sharing options such as with OPML, RSS, Facebook and Twitter.

Many of you will be happy to hear that we have decided to completely eliminate the "save" button. Everything is now saved automatically whenever you modify or create an item. Easy peasy!

While we continue to roll out cool new features, our eyes and ears remain wide open for any suggestions or bugs you might come across. Your feedback is so valuable, we can’t say thank you enough. Take a look here and let us know what you think.

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Posted 1 month ago by Davina Economou  

Listiki Public Beta, aka Milestone 1

We are excited to announce that less than 48 hours ago, Listiki moved to Public Beta.

This milestone is a major step in realizing Listiki's potential. We are aware that there's plenty of work to be done, especially if we want to get rid of that beta label, but pleased that Listiki is now open for all to use.

Our next steps are to keep our ears wide open for any suggestions or bugs you might find, and of course stick to the plan and continue rolling out features.

We'd like to extend a huge thank you to all those private beta testers who were willing to spend hours on a half baked app, to all those who insisted on trying out a less than intuitive interface, and to all those who stuck around and helped us break the first milestone.
 
How we got here is a very interesting story, which also includes drama, joy, sweat and lots of love. Now, we aren't going to dive into those details just yet, but we will let you know that it was a fun ride, and we expect it to get even better.
 
Here's an overview of what Listiki is all about:

Listiki, at heart, is a deceptively simple concept: collaborative, live, ordered lists that can be generated by anyone. Listiki will harness the power of the real-time web via Twitter & other social networks to add a layer of context and hierarchy to this massive, constant flow of data. It's a tool that delivers order and relevance for any topic.

Listiki aims to take the way you order and rank your interests to the next level. It allows you to create and gather information from the crowds whether it be friends, colleagues or simply those interested in what you’ve posted and vice-versa, making Listiki a truly useful way to share your own lists and gather information from others in a simple, organized fashion, moreover the user experience is truly a great one.

Like a wiki for lists, anyone can add items and reorder them. These changes are then propagated in real time to a master list or the "average ranking" where you can see the items flying around to their new positions.

On anything from "Best restauenats in Manhattan" to "Worst movie endings", users are asked to provide their opinion in a list, generating a valuable (and sometimes simply fun) collection of opinions. Essentially a canvas for building any type of sorted list. Best of all it all happens in real-time. 

Listiki quick walk-through video

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Posted 2 months ago by Constantinos Demetriadis 

Listiki updates: more real-time

In accordance to our regular weekly update cycle, we've just launched a few more exciting features for Listiki. Actually, it's just one feature that pops up all over the place.

Being that Listiki is a real-time web app, having real-time widgets is obvious. But we kind of struggled with the idea on how to get these integrated without over-bloating the interface, and without them saying "wow" too loud. That said, we have launched a much desired feature which is a simple as the idea that drives Listiki itself.

On site Real-Time notifications...

You'll notice on the home page a new (fourth) column, which shows you the currently active lists. These lists are in fact the ones with users on them, right now. It also says how many users are on each list, right now. Cool huh?

Now if you click on any of those lists, and visit the "Average Ranking" tab on the list view page, you'll notice that there's a pill-box design inside the tab which says how many users (apart form you) are on that list at that moment.


While this is a great way to get exposed to new content, hot lists or even stuff that might be trending, we like to think of it like a ghost tracker. You know someone is there, but you can't see them ;)

Due to the real-time nature of Listiki, and the real-time features, users can now see where the most activity is taking place. Let's not forget the most important Listiki feature/gimmick being the actual real-time list update. So, let's say you're on a lists' "Average Ranking" tab. The more users on that list, the more likely it is to see it updating in real-time!

More sharing (RSS & OPML revisited)

We have already added the ability to share a lists' average ranking via RSS & OPML. This time around we've also added the ability to share your personal lists too. Now this might not seem too important, but the potential is huge. Anyone can create a list on Listiki, and use that feed to recreate it on their blog etc. Even if you change that list on Listiki, your blog will reflect the change.

This, as the original RSS & OPML, is part of our efforts to build an API.

Minor Tweaks

As always we're fooling around with our UI on a daily basis. We like to keep the site constantly evolving, so throughout the week we've been deploying small changes here and there which include:
  • Item search with sorting filters
  • Added some more context to the tabs on the list view page
  • Fixed an issue with the "Add item" box, if there were too many suggestions
  • Small UI tweaks all over the site
  • And of course killed a few bugs
That's all for now! hope you enjoy the updates!

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Posted 2 months ago by Constantinos Demetriadis 

Listiki updates: new UI, lots of fun!

It has been a very busy couple of weeks here at Listiki HQ. We've been tweaking and testing various ways of improving the whole on site experience. We went uphill, and then we went downhill. We tried small stuff, and we also tried big stuff.

That brings us to today, where we are launching a slew of changes throughout Listiki, with the epitome being the new revamped list view page. We've been listening to all your feedback, and we tried to get most of the stuff in there, including a better user experience.

We've switched the list view interface to a tab style design, which makes more sense actually. Also, this change will cause a domino effect, and bring on changes to more parts of the site, so they can keep in line with the tab interface. Here's how the new tabs look like...


But this Listiki update brings plenty more changes and features:
  1. We've added a list directory. Yep, that's right!
    Navigate to listiki.com/search and you have access to every single list on the site, sortable in more ways than you can imagine. As always, search still brings the best out of Listiki ;)
  2. Better Search results. New interface, now with tabs.
    We've also gone ahead and revamped the search results interface, to match that of the list view. We now have separate tabs for lists and items, plus we've added a whole bunch of sorting options.
  3. More sharing. OPML & RSS.
    Another popular request was the concept of sharing the actual list, not just a link back to Listiki. This of course comes in line with our plans to release an API, but we thought we can give an extra treat to our users by deploying an OPML and RSS feed for every list on the site. We're still tweaking these, but they're there for you to consume, now.
  4. Small tweaks. Here and there.
    This update also brings a few small tweaks all over the place. From the search box, to buttons and text. These are actually too many to depict, but for those of you who are very observant, you'll know...
  5. Bugs. Gone.
    As every update, we've been killing bugs and other nasty little creatures living in our system. We just have to ask you to keep on sending them in when you spot any...
That's all for this update, but keep in touch, because we're ramping up again for another major release in the coming weeks.

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Posted 3 months ago by Constantinos Demetriadis 

Listiki updates: duplicate check

We've been busy around here, trying to sort through all your feedback, and deciding which features should roll out first, and which can wait a little longer. We've got a lot of stuff in the pipeline, and some things which are pretty much ready to launch. Other stuff that we're still not comfortable with yet, and still tweaking the UX.


Another thing keeping us busy was all the bugs many of you are running into, and are kind enough to let us know that they're there. You ideas are also proving to generate a lot more potential for Listiki...

Having said all that, today we've launched a slew of bug fixes all across the board. These also include an updated "related list" algorithm, which should provide better results and more relevant lists, when you're already viewing a list. We also added a few "cancel" buttons that were missing, and fixed some bad light-box issues. There were a few things that have been removed from the UI, but you might not even notice those ;)

All in all, there were over 20 minor (and some major) bugs swatted out.

One new feature that we launched is the Duplicate List check, upon list creation. We've seamlessly added a way to find out if the list your adding is already on Listiki, saving you - and us - from a lot of redundant lists. We think this is a very important feature, and will somewhat control the duplicate list creation, and start adding value to the existing lists. You can still bypass this and create your list regardless. 

Stay tuned for next week's update. We're getting close to a big one...

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Posted 3 months ago by Constantinos Demetriadis 

Listiki updates: Most wanted

We're pleased to let you know that we were up late last night working on some of the most wanted Listiki features. We've updated Listiki with the following so far:

Firstly, Listiki now sports a save-less design. In simple terms, this means, you no longer need to hit the save button. Any changes you make to your lists, auto-save instamagically! A simple but very cool feature because no one really likes to hit a save button every second... right? Also this eliminates any "Darn! I just lost all my list items" moments!

Secondly, we have granted every user 10 invites to share with friends.You'll find the invite box on every page except the Listiki homepage. We've also added an invite duplicate check, so if you happen to send an invite to someone who already has one, you don't lose it. Afterall, life is far more entertaining when you can share with friends...

The more the merrier!

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Posted 3 months ago by Constantinos Demetriadis 

Updated Beta Tester terms

As some may know, we've been kindly asking our Beta Testers not to post screenshots of our work-in-progress up to now. To our Beta Testers’ credit, we haven't spotted a single breach of these terms, and we thank you all for that. We also understand that this has been quite frustrating for people who just wanted to talk about us. Good or bad.

The reason for our secrecy was as fundamental as “we’re not ready to open shop, yet”. Which also demonstrates the reason we chose to move into a private beta in the first place.

After Wednesday’s official presentation of Listiki at Openfund’s Demo Day, we felt that it’s time to renew this “contract” with our beta testers, and give them the opportunity to speak more freely about Listiki. That said, we have revised out Beta Tester terms.

Effective immediately, and for all our Beta Testers, these are the new terms:

  • Your access code is private. You cannot share your code with anyone.
  • We're still in beta. Please understand that things could break and data can still be lost. Do not rely on Listiki for saving critical information.
  • Feedback is needed. You have applied for beta tester, as such we expect you to be extremely critical.
  • Yes, you can tweet about Listiki, write your impressions on your blog or just share the love.

Thank you all for your brilliant feedback, we’re waiting for more!

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Posted 4 months ago by Constantinos Demetriadis