Aug

13

2008

(0) Comments

Ningin Down for Design Change

02:21AM by Hoc

This is only going to take 15 minutes at most, so it’ll be back online soon.

Ok, it took closer to 1.5 hours. I’m blaming it on Internet Explorer, both 6 and 7. Read more about the new design on this Ningin blog post.

Aug

8

2008

(0) Comments

server glitches

12:17AM by Hoc

We’ve been incorporating a lot of code today which has caused some problems that as of now has been fixed. We’re sorry about the downtime but all of our sites will be online in a few hours. We’re especially sorry to those who participate in our weekly America’s Best Dance Crew chat on Ningin.com.

Updates will be provided if more any more bad stuff happens.

Jun

4

2008

(0) Comments

Microsites for Niche Communities

11:27AM by Hoc

In theory, Mixr Media has the capabilities to launch any number of communities using our suite of social applications. So far, all the communities we’ve launched have been areas of passionate interest for members of our staff. It’s always been important for us to be a part of the communities we build and not just the host.

The goal we have with Ningin is the goal we have for every one of our communities – we want it to be the definitive resource for the niche that it serves. In Ningin’s case, it’s Asian media. Today, we took a big step towards that by partnering up with the Asian American Film Lab and their 72 Hour Shootout short film competition. We’ll be creating a special microsite for them where their members and our users can watch streaming videos of all the participants and read blog updates provided by our own Ningin bloggers. The microsite will be live on June 16th. There’s more to it than just that, so read the full press release for more details.

So far this is our first partnership and our first microsite. It’s been a lot of fun and something we would like to do more of in the future.

May

27

2008

(0) Comments

NobodyOpen—NFL Communities

09:23PM by Hoc

We’ve been quietly beta testing a new community for the past couple of weeks, NobodyOpen.com, a NFL football community. The goal with NobodyOpen is to provide a place for fans of every NFL team to meet other fans, discuss football and read the latest team news. Both Phil and I are avid sports fans and we know a lot of other people are as well. Registration has been invitation only, but we’ve open it up for everyone today.

In case you’re curious, the name came from irreverent commentary on the seemingly majority of NFL teams—very few receivers open when the quarterback wants to throw to them.

There are a couple things we’re doing that are different from our pre-existing communities. We’re looking to build sub-communities within a larger umbrella NFL community. The sub-communities are delineated by individual NFL teams. Also, instead of building out each site for each NFL team, we’re asking users to pre-register. When enough people pre-register, then we’ll create the team sites. This process also allows users to sign-up as potential bloggers, moderators, and administers saving us some time in finding these people anyway. Users can register from any of our communities or sub communities. Once registered, they can visit and interact with any of our sites—one account, multiple communities.

To start, each team site will just be Forums and we’ll layer in Blogs and a Community Page. The main NobodyOpen site will soon have Social News. However, our platform affords us the flexibility to add or remove apps depending on the demand of each site.

Overall this method allows for a very organic growth. Prior to this, we were able to grow communities in three ways: more apps, more bloggers, and more features. Now we’re able to build communities within communities, each with their own branching growth paths.

Our General Counsel wants to add the following disclaimer to this post: NobodyOpen.com is not affiliated with the National Football League. All views expressed on that website are our own or of our community members.

May

4

2008

(0) Comments

Sites Offline, Work in Progress

06:50AM by Hoc

All our sites are offline while we incorporate a new design and add feature enhancements. We expect this to take the majority of the day. Thanks for your patiences!

Beta testers can still access our sites during this process.

7:45am EST - Took sites offline, starting upgrades and changes.
1:10pm EST - Server is going offline for about 10 mins while we make updates.
4:50pm EST - Jetdrop and Ziggytek now online. There’s a good chance you need to refresh your browser. Beta testers, please focus on Ningin.
7:00pm EST - Ningin is online. Redesign done!