Blogging Present.ly

Since our launch there has been a small group users who have a keen dislike for the 140 character limit imposed by Present.ly. Why create such an arbitrary restriction? Because it keeps the noise down. Micro-update platforms quickly lose their usefulness if they are used the same way that e-mail or instant messages are. It’s for frequent, short updates to make sure that the information stream never becomes overwhelming.

But sometimes there’s really more to say than 140 characters can express. What if you want to share a paragraph of a blog post in which your company was mentioned? What if you’re a programmer looking for some help on some buggy code? It still doesn’t help to pollute the stream with this information, and that’s why we’ve developed a new feature called Text Attachments.

All The Info, None of the Noise

A Text Attachment is any long-form text that is associated with a particular update. It is visible simply by clicking on the “More” link that will appear after the update text on any update that has such an attachment. In addition to allowing you the space to convey more information, you can also format it using a number of different options (including syntax highlighting for most popular programming languages).

We think this is a really exciting feature because it solves a problem that micro-updates have always had without resorting to destroying the underlying principles of the communications method. Just a few uses for this that came up in some of our discussions:

• Sharing pieces of blog posts or articles with a link in the update
• Quickly sharing code amongst developers
• Summarize the answer to a question in the update, then write out a detailed explanation in the attachment
• Give some options for an informal poll
• Share notes from a phone call
• Write a quick list of your tasks for the day

But the real value of this feature will be in the innovative ways you find to work this into your company’s communications flow. We’re excited to hear back about your ideas, so please feel free to post them in the comments!

One More Thing

Since our launch you could post an update to Present.ly via the special e-mail address in the “Device Settings” page. Now with Text Attachments you can write a message with a subject and a body to the same address. The subject will become the update text, the body will become the attachment. So if there’s an e-mail that is pertinent to a group, you could simply forward it to your Present.ly post address and put “@groupname” at the beginning of the subject line.

This integration will make it extremely easy to start conversations about an important e-mail without resorting to endless chains of Reply-Alls.

Seeing is Believing

We’ve put together a short screencast (HD version available here) to show how this new feature works, so please enjoy and ask any questions in the comments on this post!

Some people have been asking if we’re going to be releasing a mobile browser version of Present.ly. Well, we already did! Present.ly launched with a fully functioning mobile version that has been tested on the iPhone, Blackberry, and Windows Mobile platforms (and should work on any mobile device with a browser).

All you have to do is point the browser at your account (i.e. http://youraccount.presentlyapp.com/) and it should automatically detect that you’re using a mobile device. So if you can’t live for 20 minutes without getting your Present.ly fix (I know I can’t), you should bookmark the mobile version of your account today!

Since our launch we’ve been lucky to see a number of blog and news posts about the product. I just wanted to share a few of them (in no particular order):

• Web 2.0 Expo: The Good, The Bad, And The Ugly (Wired Epicenter Blog)
• Business microblog tool Present.ly is smarter than Yammer (cnet’s WebWare)
• Present.ly: Twitter For Companies, This Time Done Right (Profy)
• And in this corner…Present.ly packs a solid punch against Yammer (ZDNet)
• Business Review: Present.ly (StartupCFO)
• Enterprise Twitter Heats Up With Present.ly (NevilleHobson.com)

It’s been great to hear all of the feedback (positive and negative); it helps us to build a better product. While it’d be nice to just sit back and read the blog posts as they come in, we’ve been hard at work fine-tuning Present.ly and preparing new features for release (we’ve deployed 14 user-requested changes since our launch on Tuesday). Stay tuned to this blog to always hear the latest about what’s on the horizon for Present.ly!

We’re using CrowdSound to gather and respond to requests and issues that have come up since our launch. You can see and use the widget by clicking “Feedback” at the top of your account, by going to the Feedback Page, or by visiting the hosted feedback page. You’ll see suggestions tagged with a variety of statuses, I just wanted to run through each so that you can understand where your request is in its lifecycle:

• New: We haven’t had a chance to look at this in-depth yet. Stay tuned!
• Under Review: We are discussing our plans and timelines for this feature.
• Planned: This is a feature we plan on implementing in the future.
• In Progress: We are currently working on implementing this suggestion, expect it in the near future.
• Forthcoming: This feature will be coming in the next deployment (usually every 24 to 48 hours).
• Completed: It’s been implemented!
• Not Planned: This is not a feature we plan on implementing at this time. Will always come with a comment as to why.
• Invalid: Usually used for duplicate suggestions or suggestions for things we already have. Will always come with a comment.

We want to be very open about improving Present.ly, and we think that CrowdSound is a great way to help us do that. If you have an account-specific problem, we would encourage you to e-mail support to get the fastest resolution possible. Thanks for the feedback so far, it’s been really useful to help the continued improvement of Present.ly!

If you use Mac OS X, there is a great tool for creating Site-Specific Browsers called Fluid. This great application gives websites the ability to integrate with Growl (a system-wide notification system) and add dock badges. Present.ly takes advantages of these features as you can see:

We have also created a high-resolution icon to use for the Fluid application. Just create a new Fluid browser pointing to your Present.ly subdomain and you’ll be good to go!

We have officially opened Present.ly to the public!

You can sign up for an account at the plans page. All accounts come with 60-day trials (you don’t even need a credit card), so what are you waiting for? Get in the Present.ly!

If you still need a little more information about what Present.ly is and how it works, we have just added a videos page with a new screencast.

Thanks for your interest, and we look forward to seeing many of you as users in the near future.

In Present.ly you can “broadcast” messages as a group or as the system. That is, an administrator can create a message that comes “from” the system and is visible to everyone. Similarly, a group manager can broadcast an update that comes “from” the group. Here’s a shortcast demonstrating the feature:

While this is great to use in the application, it has even more use through the Present.ly API. For instance, a software team could tie a post-commit hook to broadcast to a group for the project, instantly updating all members of the team that a new commit has been pushed to the repository. It can also be used for meeting reminders and a number of things we probably haven’t thought of yet!

Over the next couple of days leading up to our launch, we are going to try to put together a few short screencasts (thus “shortcast”) highlighting some of the cool features of Present.ly. Up first is Media Sharing!

A man called Yahtzee created a series of video game reviews called Zero Punctuation that combine a simple art and animation style with fast-talking commentary. When we wanted to create a video to pitch Present.ly for the TechCruch50, we thought it might be fun to do it in a similar style. It would be a waste to just let it gather dust on our hard drives, so here it is:

Removing my tongue from my cheek for a moment, we have been really excited to see some of the feedback on Twitter and around the web. Launch day can’t come soon enough!

Last night when Yammer won the TechCrunch50, our interest was more than a little piqued. Today we’re officially taking the wraps off of Present.ly, our “Twitter for Businesses” product that we’ve been working on in stealth mode for the last several months and are launching on September 16 at the Web 2.0 Expo in New York.

It’s great to see that short-form communication for businesses is so promising as to win top honors at such a competitive conference. We’re extremely passionate about the field because it has the potential to really transform how people communicate inside an organization. So congratulations are in order to the Yammer team for bringing so much exposure to the field.

One of the reasons that we were so surprised to see Yammer among the TechCrunch50 is because Present.ly was submitted to be included as well! Unfortunately, we never got the chance to demo our product for the TC50 experts (something that was supposed to be part of the process). We didn’t receive a clear response back as to why, but it would have been great to have the chance to go head-to-head with Yammer in the preliminaries of TechCrunch50 or on stage at the conference.

It’s Still On, Though

Be that as it may, it’s certainly been a shot of adrenaline for our team to have a surprise competitor mere days before we are set to launch. We’ve had some time to examine Yammer, and we’re ready for some competition! So how do they stack up against each other?

Security and Control: Present.ly is built to be an official means of communication for a business, rather than an ad-hoc network of employees. User accounts on Present.ly are created only through administrator invitations, and accounts are secured using SSL encryption.

Collaboration: Present.ly has hash tags, like Yammer. But it also has groups, private messaging, and media/file sharing built in. We built Present.ly from the ground up to have powerful features tailored specifically for business use. Present.ly accounts can also be extended beyond a single e-mail domain, allowing you to include clients, consultants and other collaborators effortlessly.

Platform Approach: Starting from day one Present.ly has an API that is fully compatible with the Twitter REST API. This means that existing Twitter applications can work instantly with Present.ly with almost no modification. Through the API, Present.ly can easily integrate with all parts of your business.

The Power of Context: Present.ly automatically analyzes each post for context, automatically separating out questions, replies, and urgent messages. Our robust notifications system allows you to receive updates via E-Mail, SMS, and IM based on this context.

We’re really proud of Present.ly and think that it can enable great new things for companies of all sizes, from 5 employees to 50,000. On September 16, get ready to start using the REAL Twitter for Business.