Building Profilactic

New Partnership

2009-08-25T09:13:00.005-04:00

It has been a busy two weeks for team profilactic. We have kicked off a new partnership with our friends at Paid, Inc. (PAYD). We are currently developing two new business focused product offerings and will be promoting them as soon as we have beta versions available.

So you are probably asking yourself why do I care, well we are going to take some of the new features that we are building and enhance profilactic with them. This will make your experience faster and better as we add additional functionality. You will also have the ability to take more of your social content with you (more on this later).

We are extremely excited about the opportunity that we have with Paid and we will be delivering more details on our activities in the coming weeks.

Good News

2009-03-28T10:29:00.003-04:00

We wanted to assure everyone that Profilactic isn't *going* anywhere. We are simply seeking assistance from other companies to help us make Profilactic the best service it can be. Unlike some other companies we have built this w/our own money doing it part time. We would love to be able to spend more time on it. We have a ton of cool ideas and we hope to be implementing them soon.

Currently, we are talking to multiple companies about how we can accomplish this goal. The best part is that they are helping us forge the vision for what Profilactic can become. Some of the ideas that we are discussing will result in added functionality for you, so that you can get the most out of our service. It is very exciting for us and we will keep you posted on our progress.

As always, feel free to contact us via email if you are interested and would like to discuss any opportunities.

Thanks,

Tom (tom at profilactic dot com)
Eric (eric at profilactic dot com)

Profilactic is Seeking a Caring Home

2009-02-24T12:45:00.000-05:00

Profilactic has been through a lot in the last six months. Our founder (Shawn) has taken a new job and moved. Our developers (Tom & Eric) have been extremely busy with a new day job and a growing startup. All this has led to a somewhat diminished role with our involvement in Profilactic over the last several months. However, new user signups still flow in and traffic continues to increase. It's hard to believe we started talking about building Profilactic back in April of 2006 and later launched the beta in December of that same year. Since then we've added 190+ sites that support profile pages and/or lifestream feeds that fuel mashups and widgets.

But alas, we have reached the burnout point with Profilactic. Trying to build/maintain a site on the side for over two years has been tough on us and rather than turn it off, we are looking to shop it around so it will continue to live. We are looking for any parties that would be interested in purchasing www.profilactic.com and keep the concept going (and inject some fresh biz dev ideas). We aren't looking for a windfall here (although we'll take it ;-P ). We just want to recoup what we have put into it over the past (hosting fees, lawyer fees etc.).

Feel free to contact us via email if you are interested and would like to discuss any opportunities.

Thanks,
Tom (tom at profilactic dot com)
Eric (eric at profilactic dot com)

New feature: Commenting

2008-09-12T11:07:00.001-04:00

We have added the ability to comment on items in every lifestream. We expanded the existing Reply to functionality, so you can continue to post your comments to Twitter. We will add support for other services in the near future. You can comment on your own lifestream as well.

As always, please let us know what you think by posting a comment or e-mailing us at feedback at profilactic dot com.

Profilactic adds support sites suggested by our new European friend

2008-09-05T09:52:00.002-04:00

Just wanted to let everyone know that Profilactic has added support for 4 new sites thanks to a possible new venture in Europe.

Viviti
Netlog
Garage TV
Garage TV (BE)

This brings the total number of sites that Profilactic supports to 190. Of course, you can still add unlimited custom sites.

Reply to Twitter posts in Profilactic

2008-06-27T11:44:00.004-04:00

Wanted to let everyone know that we've add a new feature to Profilactic. You can now reply to other users' Twitter posts from within Profilactic.

To do it, just go to someone else's (it doesn't work on your own Twitter posts) lifestream page or your Friends' Lifestream page and look for a Twitter post.

After the post, you will see the Twitter reply icon. Click that and then you will be able to reply inline. See the screenshots below for more info.

Step 1: Click one of the reply icons

Step 2: Type your message and click "Reply"

As always, let us know what you think by posting a comment.

Auto-embed QIK videos

2008-06-15T22:52:00.002-04:00

I recently got access to the upcoming Windows Mobile version of QIK (thanks to Jane Fu from QIK) and have been playing with it a lot using my Moto Q9h.

In order to get the most out of QIK in Profilactic, we made a small update so that your QIK videos are auto-embedded in your lifestream.

So instead of seeing a small thumbnail and a link to the video, you will be able to interact with the video from within your lifestream page.

It's a small change, but one that we think makes using QIK even better. Check out my lifestream (or scobleizer's) to see it in action.

Pushed out a couple of changes this morning

2008-06-12T09:18:00.004-04:00

Just wanted to let everyone know that we pushed out a few changes to the Profilactic site this morning.

The most noticeable change is the addition of favicons in our Ping.fm "Post something" window. So, after you post your status, we will show you the "success" icon and the list of sites it was submitted to. I find this very handy since I often forget which sites I have configured in Ping.fm. If you have short-term memory loss like me, you'll love this feature... wait, what feature?

We also fixed a couple of minor bugs. The biggest one having to do with your profile avatar. We now scale the image automatically rather than failing and blowing away all of your profile changes.

Anyone having trouble with the "Set up my lifestream" page?

2008-06-08T14:59:00.002-04:00

We have had a couple of reports of problems with the "Set up my lifestream" page on the Mac. If you're having a problem with that page, please head over to the thread on Get Satisfaction and let us know. Thanks.

We sort of suck at e-mail

2008-06-06T16:32:00.002-04:00

In our haste to get the word out about our new features, we made a couple of mistakes in our e-mail message.

First, we sent the e-mail to people who had deleted their account. Yeah, we know -- really lame. We sincerely apologize for that.

Second, we didn't include the link and/or instructions to unsubscribe from the alert mails. Again, lame and we're sorry.

We will make sure that this kind of stuff doesn't happen again. It had been about 9 months since we sent an e-mail update, so we were a little rusty, I guess.

BTW, if you ever want to change your e-mail preferences, head over to My tools > Account settings.

Profilactic gets Digg love

2008-06-06T10:25:00.003-04:00

We sent out an e-mail blast to our members overnight announcing our super-cool, new integration of Ping.fm.

This morning, there are, not one, but two stories about Profilactic on Digg.

So if you have a couple of spare diggs lying around, check out these two stories:

1. Profilactic Update | Now U Can Post To 14 Social Svcs

2. Profilactic Update | healthylemons example for news show

Video: See "Post something" in action

2008-06-04T13:38:00.001-04:00

If you want to see the new "Post something" feature in action (and hear what I sound like with a cold), check out the video below. It was shot on my Flip video camera in 1 take, so you know it's going to be good!

Ping.fm adds 3 more services

2008-06-04T13:24:00.001-04:00

The new "Post something" feature on Profilactic just keeps getting better thanks to the guys over at Ping.fm.

They have just added support for 3 new services: Plurk, Mashable and Xanga.

That means that you can now post to 14 different social services from within Profilactic using Ping.fm.

Updated support for StumbleUpon

2008-06-04T09:35:00.002-04:00

Wanted to let everyone know that we have updated our support for StumbleUpon to include RSS. See, SU was site #67 here on Profilactic. At the time we originally added them, they didn't support RSS.

After reading missangelyss' blog post about Profilactic, I realized it was time to add their RSS feeds.

If you already have StumbleUpon in your Profilactic lifestream, go to "My Tools > Set up my lifestream" to remove then re-add it. This will make sure you get the latest support for StumbleUpon RSS.

Profilactic adds support for Amazon reviews (#186)

2008-06-03T11:23:00.004-04:00

Just wanted to let everyone know that Profilactic has added support for user-submitted reviews on Amazon. So if you're one of those people who reads *and* writes reviews about what you read, then you're in luck. We also plan on adding Wishlist items soon.

Thanks to Sonja Foust for suggesting it through our Get Satisfaction page. If you have any site suggestions, please post them there.

This brings the total number of sites that Profilactic supports to 186. Of course, you can still add unlimited custom sites.

[UPDATE: We had to limit the data that we show from the Amazon reviews feed. Amazon puts TABLEs and other funky stuff in their RSS feed. In order to keep the lifestream pages looking good, we are only displaying the rating and the book title with a link to the review for now.]

Profilactic adds support for Loudervoice (#185)

2008-06-02T13:49:00.002-04:00

Just wanted to let everyone know that Profilactic has added support for user-generated review site Loudervoice.

Thanks to Baxter Tocher for suggesting it.

This brings the total number of sites that Profilactic supports to 185. Of course, you can still add unlimited custom sites.

Post content from within Profilactic

2008-06-01T11:52:00.008-04:00

We are very pleased to announce that we have partnered with Ping.fm to allow our members to post content to 11 social services from within Profilactic.

If you're not familiar with Ping.fm, what makes their service super cool is that you can post to all 11 of those social services *at the same time*. So if you want your Twitter friends and your Facebook friends and your LinkedIn connections to know that you're "sitting in my car at the Atlantic Ocean with my napping son reading Harvard Business Review and eating cotton candy," you can do it with our "Post something" tool powered by Ping.fm.

The list of services currently supported are: Bebo, Blogger, Facebook, hi5, Jaiku, LinkedIn, LiveJournal, MySpace, Pownce, Tumblr and Twitter.

Here is a screenshot of what you'll see after you set up your Ping.fm account and click the "Post something" button on your own lifestream page:

In the next week or so, we will be adding a few more options such as the ability to reply to the Twitter posts in your Friends' Lifestream. However, we think this first phase is still pretty badass.

Ping.fm is still in beta; however, they have given us 1,000 beta codes to use. So if you wanna get your post on, head over to Ping.fm and use the beta code "profilactic."

As always, please let us know what you think by posting a comment or e-mailing us at feedback at profilactic dot com.

Updated support for Bebo

2008-05-30T15:49:00.003-04:00

Wanted to let everyone know that we have updated our support for Bebo in Profilactic. Your Bebo blog will now import into your Profilactic lifestream. Unfortunately, Bebo doesn't support RSS for other content like Photos. However, if when they do, we'll add that, too.

Profilactic adds support for Plurk (#183)

2008-05-29T14:50:00.001-04:00

Just wanted to let everyone know that Profilactic has added support for Plurk. With all of the problems that Twitter has been having, we figured it doesn't hurt to support other services that display your current status.

Thanks to Graham Smith for suggesting it.

This brings the total number of sites that Profilactic supports to 183. Of course, you can still add unlimited custom sites.

Profilactic adds support for Netvibes (#182)

2008-05-28T22:12:00.004-04:00

Just wanted to let everyone know that Profilactic has added support for Netvibes. Honestly, I already thought we supported Netvibes, but it turns out we didn't. When you support 182 sites, you can lose track, I guess.

Thanks to Felix Fischer for reminding us about Netvibes support and then mentioning that FriendFeed supports it just to make sure we got the message :)

This brings the total number of sites that Profilactic supports to 182. Of course, you can still add unlimited custom sites.

Profilactic adds support for TwitPic (#181)

2008-05-26T09:50:00.002-04:00

Just wanted to let everyone know that Profilactic has added support for TwitPic.

This brings the total number of sites that Profilactic supports to 181. Of course, you can still add unlimited custom sites.

The new Aggregated Media logo

2008-05-23T17:36:00.002-04:00

As we mentioned earlier, we used 99designs.com to "crowdsource" a logo for our LLC Aggregated Media. We're in the process of raising money for Aggregated Media, so we need a better logo than the one we were using.

After a week, we ended up with over 60 designs from a bunch of talented designers. We ended up narrowing it down to 5 final designs before choosing the logo below:

The logo was designed by Ink who has done a lot of great logos through 99designs.com.

We're in the process of building out our Aggregated Media site; however, you can see the logo in action on our placeholder page.

Help us design Aggregated Media's logo

2008-05-15T15:51:00.003-04:00

As you may or may not know, Profilactic.com is a prototype of the larger social media platform we are creating with our LLC Aggregated Media.

We are in desperate need of a logo for AM, so we decided to go the crowdsourcing route and launch a design contest at 99designs.com.

Please take a look at the entries and let us know what you think. Of course, you can also feel free to whip up a badass logo of your own and submit it.

The contest runs through May 22nd.

Profilactic adds support for kirtsy (#179) & iReport (#180)

2008-05-12T16:21:00.002-04:00

Just wanted to let everyone know that Profilactic has added support for kirtsy and iReport.

This brings the total number of sites that Profilactic supports to 180. Of course, you can still add unlimited custom sites.

Profilactic mashups are now "lifestreams"

2008-05-08T10:25:00.002-04:00

We've been working on Profilactic for approximately two years now. When we first got started, there was no such thing as "lifestreaming" or "social media aggregation." In fact, the first term/buzzword I remember getting thrown around was Marc Canter's use of "digital lifestyle aggregator."

We chose to call our aggregation feature a "mashup" because we were taking all of these various feeds and mashing them together. Clever, huh?

Anyway, fast forward two years. "Lifestreaming" has become the accepted term for what we called "mashups." In order to avoid confusion in what we're offering, we have changed our "mashups" to "lifestreams." Obviously not Earth-shattering news; however, I wanted to give a little background on where the original name came from and why we changed it.

Right now, we are still using "mashup" in our URLs. Over time, we will be changing those to "lifestream." Of course, when we make that change, we will make sure we set up redirects so that all of the old "mashup" links will still work.

So what do you think? Are we total sellouts for adopting the latest buzzword? Or does it clarify what we're offering? Leave a comment and let us know.