Flipshake

Now anyone can sign up to Flipshake without waiting for an invitation!

Thanks to all of your great feedback during the private portion of our beta, we’ve decided it’s time to move Flipshake into an “open” beta status. That means anyone can now sign up and start using the site right away without waiting for an invitation. This goes hand in hand with the new social sharing/bookmarking feature, so now all those people you share our site with can jump into Flipshake and check it out. Let everyone know about your stuff on Flipshake! Spread the word and help us build a great community.

Seeing how much awesome Avatar fan art we’ve seen on the site, I’ve decided I’d better get up to speed on the show you all seem so crazy about. Though it seems a show I’d love to watch, I admit I’ve never watched an episode. Well now I’ve got season one sitting in my iTunes and I hope to catch up with all of you in your love for Avatar!

If you guys have any insider advice or tips on how best to enjoy the show, I’d love to hear it. Also let me know what it is you guys liked so much about the show. I’ll let you guys know what I think after I watch the first few episodes. :)

We’ve recently received a lot of feedback regarding the points system, so we have made a slight modification. Our point system will always be something we tweak and adjust as we roll out new functionality and as our community grows.

Our mindset about points, is that points are supposed to be a measure of a persons participation on the site. The issue seems to be that one particular action (first to collect a flip) is earning too many points and therefore, points are not an accurate measure of participation across the whole site, but instead of just that one aspect. Basically, we are seeing a quantity approach to collecting, instead of a quality approach to collecting. As one of our users so eloquently put it, “point-grubbing munchkins” are missing the point of the site which is to create great Flips that others can collect and enjoy.

In light of this issue, we have decided to make the following change:

When you are first to collect a Flip, you will no longer receive 50pts. No points will be awarded here. This is something that may come back into play once the site has more people and it becomes more of a challenge to be first, but as of now it seems to be skewing the point system too heavily.

On another note, we are also changing the level system. Instead of going up one level every 100 points, you will only go up a level every one thousand points. So, 1000 points = level 1, 2000 points = level 2, and so on. All users across the site will see their level change uniformly. Take a look at our previous post about other ways to earn points.

We can only determine if this method is successful with your help. So please, let us know your thoughts and also if you have any ideas on how to better run the point system, let us know. We’re all ears!

Thanks so much for making Flipshake as successful as it’s been. We hope to continue meeting your expectations.

We’d really like to thank everyone who has joined the site so far. Your Flips have been awesome! We are extremely happy with how things are going so far and your great response to Flipshake has really been amazing. To those of you who have gone ahead and posted about Flipshake in your blogs or journals – thanks a ton! We really appreciate it. Keep on spreading the word :)

We’d also like to thank you for all the great feedback you’ve given. We’ve been working hard to improve the site, and a lot of little things you guys have brought to our attention have been fixed, and some of the bigger issues – like the message center – are being worked on right now.

Your ideas, comments, and suggestions will really help us make Flipshake a site you love to hang at. So keep them coming and thanks again!

Well here it is, our first post on our new blog. We’ve been working really hard at getting Flipshake ready for its beta release, and now that we’ve got it launched and we’ve got a great bunch of people on the site, we wanted to get our blog up so we can share what’s going on!

For those who are just finding out about Flipshake, Flipshake is a new community site for the creation and collection of digital trading cards called Flips! Flips are double-sided and square. Other than that, they can pretty much be anything you want them to be. Just submit an image for the front and an image for the back and you’ve made a Flip! And once you create a Flip, it becomes available for others to collect.

So be sure to check back with this blog often. Or better yet, subscribe to our RSS feed so you won’t miss out on anything. We’ll use this blog to let you know about things we’re working on, new features, tips, new contests, featured Flip Makers and Collectors, and just general Flipshake news.

Stay tuned!