ImThere Blog

With the new API, the index methods can take an optional parameter q, which is a search query. I realized there was nothing documenting our search system, so… have some documentation!

I’m still working on the documentation, but figured I’d go ahead and post what I’ve written and start getting feedback. Let me know what you think!

Since Gorman is slacking on his blogging duties, I decided to blog about the recent updates myself. I’m not as great with words as gorman, so I’ll get to the point. Here’s what’s new:

• Fixed issue with meta tags not escaping content properly
• Hotness improvements
• Various changes to URLs to make them cleaner
• Improvements to contact importing on invitations
• Various changes/fixes with email verification
• Fixed links in invite email, welcome email, and mobile verification message
• Rewrote the carousel javascript – This fixes various issues with thumbnails/user icons not showing up and scrolling carousels
• Fixed issue with timelines w/ little content not initializing properly
• Fixed styling on pop-up calendars on event creator/editor and invites
• Fixed issue with comment caching which caused comments to not automatically update
• Added a notification for IE6 users about our current lack of support for their browser of choice (and recommend alternatives ;)
• Various html validation fixes
• Fixed issue with sorting by newest
• Fixed issue with username length on user carousels

I’ve mostly been working on the ImThere API, which is coming along quite nicely. Here’s some of the functionality that will be included:

• Browsing events, venues, artists, and users (obviously)
• Posting/updating events, venues, and artists
• Saying ImThere/BeenThere/SeenThem to events/venues/artists
• Favoriting venues and artists
• Setting your status message

Most of the api is already in place, if you want to start poking around. Just add .xml to a url. We’ll officially launch the API, with complete documentation, very soon. If you want more info on the API, stop by our API room on Campfire. I’ll try to idle in there and answer questions.

Also, Wes is working on some fun stuff which should be launching “any day now”.

With the holidays behind us, the team has been hard at work finishing the first update to ImThere in 2008. That update is now here! It brings us into the world of Ruby on Rails 2, the major new version of the platform ImThere is built on. We can now take advantage of all of the great functionality and performance enhancements that Rails 2 offers, which we’ve already started to do. In the process of all of this, we took the opportunity to overhaul our code base and get it in shape for a brand new year of development.

Not only is ImThere now faster and easier to build on, it also features a number of great enhancements and fixes:

• Rewritten search system that provide much more accurate results
• Rewritten related content system that provide truly useful suggestions
• Reworked timeline and content stream to load faster
• Clarified time display on the Going On Now bar
• Fixed navigation issues on various pages
• Improved tagging functionality
• Tweaked invitation system
• Tweaked mobile system usability
• Numerous styling improvements

All in all, this is an important update that will have long-lasting effects on ImThere. One example of that is our forthcoming API and sharing functionality that is now possible with this update. Expect that and a whole lot more in the near future. 2008 is going to be a great year for ImThere!

As promised, our article is up on Vitamin! It’s a very honest behind-the-scenes look at what we’ve gone through with ImThere. The article includes how we struggled to launch the first version of ImThere, what we realized what was fundamentally wrong with it, the actions we took to correct those problems, how the current version of ImThere was built, and where we’re at now. Hopefully you will find it an interesting read (it’s long, but has tons of pictures!), and maybe it will help you avoid similar problems if you’re starting a website. Needless to say, we’re very thankful to the great folks at Vitamin for letting us share our story.

You can also find the article on Digg, YCNews, and reddit.

In preparation for the article, we’ve released a substantial update to ImThere! We began rolling out pieces of it late last week, so you may have noticed some of it already. Here’s what’s new:

A brand-new signup system that’s extremely fast, much more useful, and very pretty too!



A fully redesigned invitation system that’s much easier to use and access



Mobile and email notifications for nearly all aspects of ImThere—the mobile notifications are all interactive!



An upgraded WYSIWYG editor for many parts of the site



A simple way to invite your friends to ImThere. Give it a try; ImThere is much more fun with your friends!



Numerous enhancements to the message center that make it much more functional



Pretty spinners so you know your content is being posted or updated!

We’ve actually fully reworked our mobile system. It’s much more functional, and very fast. I highly recommend checking it out, as it really is cool. You can start by checking out mobile help page on ImThere. As you begin to receive mobile notifications, more and more functionality will be exposed.

In an effort to make ImThere as open and accessible as possible, we’ve integrated a number of microformats. We now fully support hCalendar, hCard, and XFN. These microformats make a variety of data quickly accessible through applications and browser extensions that support them. If you’re interested in learning more about microformats, this is a great place to start.

We’ve taken a number of steps to ensure ImThere can handle the ever-increasing demand. For starters, we moved to a new grid-based hosting company called slicehost. They make scaling a snap, provide completely automated backup services, and offer overall stellar service. We couldn’t be happier with them. They’re even based in St. Louis! In addition to moving to a better server setup, we’ve implemented a variety of caching techniques. Not only will all of this allow us to better handle traffic, but it should make ImThere many times faster for you!

There are a bunch of smaller enhancements and fixes we’ve rolled out too:

• Numerous IE fixes
• NowThere now correctly shows timeless events
• Changing your password now requires you to enter your current password for security purposes
• Corrected sorting on Events > Newest
• Birthday fields now work correctly
• Clicking a picture in any content stream now takes you directly to the clicked picture
• The sidebar calendar now correctly shows just the upcoming 3 days that have events

A number of smaller bugs have been fixed too. Needless to say, the team has been doing a great job. Our work isn’t done though, of course. We’re now working on something that will be truly groundbreaking and make ImThere much more fun and useful. Think I’m exaggerating? Wait and see!

We left (our hearts in) San Francisco about a week ago, and we’re already itching to get back. It was a great trip that was productive, energizing, and a ton of fun. We were there to meet with advisors and investors, all of which went really well. Everyone we met with had an impressive resumé of successful products and services, yet were down-to-earth, excited to hear what we were doing, and willing to help in various ways. Their response to the ImThere private beta was very positive, and it became clear to us that once it goes live, we’ll have the resources we need to make it a success.

In our spare time, we took in as much of the Bay Area as we could. We made the trek to the Apple HQ (our mecca) and the Googleplex, met some of the Digg, Wordpress, and Songbird guys, and went to the fascinating and very cool Maker Faire. Between those adventures, our meetings, the weather, and well, mostly everything aside from the lack of parking, we were hooked. We do love St. Louis for a lot of reasons, and we’re proud to be based here, but I’d be willing to bet that we’ll be heading west frequently. For a company like ours, and people like us, spending time out there is essential solely for all of the great connections that can be made.

Now that we are back to our normal routine, we’re burning every ounce of midnight oil we can find to launch the new ImThere. We’re presenting at Web Ascent in Chicago on June 20th, so you can bet we’ll be up and running by then. It’s shaping up to be a great gathering of out-of-the-valley startups, so if you’re in the area, definitely check it out. For those that can’t make it, we’ll try to post video of our presentation shortly afterwards.

Keep checking back, or subscribe to our RSS feed, for the latest on ImThere, which will soon include our launch announcement!