Awesomeness.

Groupvine is now partnering with the Daily Jolt to create the first real student platform for running campus groups and student governments!

This is a pretty exciting development and it includes building a whole new, sexy version of Groupvine. It also means more schools will be joining us — and great new features like communities, payments, voting and so much more.

I’ll post screenshots here soon — in the meantime, email scotthurff AT thegroupvine (dot com) if you have any questions!

So we want you to win money.

After launching our survey last night, we already have about 150 respondents.  But we want more. 

Here’s the thing — if you take our survey and refer the most people, you can win up to $150. 

Take it here, but only if you’re a college student or recent grad: http://thegroupvine.com/surveys/take.php

Oh, and don’t forget to see if you’re on the leaderboard: http://thegroupvine.com/surveys/leaderboard.php

We have more, huge news coming about Groupvine.  We’ll be back soon.

We just switched from Dreamhost to Known Host.

This is after four months of poor support and a noticeably slow server — so the decision to switch was pretty easy.

We also considered Media Temple but were so impressed with Known Host’s support response that we decided to go with them.

Ooh, exciting.

Hey everyone, just dropping a line to introduce myself. I’m Bill D’Alessandro, and you’ll be hearing from me quite a bit around here, I’m the newest member of the Groupvine team (along with Landon).

If you’re really curious about me, there’s a link to my blog in the sidebar, but all the Groupviney goodness will be posted here. I’ll be heading up the development and programming for Groupvine, and that includes listening to user requests. And when you guys make recommendations, I listen! So to kick things off -

Recurring Events
We’ve gotten a number of requests for recurring events in Groupvine. So, thanks to your use of the feedback form (top right inside Groupvine), you got your wish! Today we added a recurring events feature to the “Events” tab. Just click the “Repeat this event” checkbox, and you’re on your way.

As always thanks for your feedback, keep suggesting features, my next post might be announcing your feature idea.

November is Birthday Month
As a final note, I’d like to wish a Happy Birthday to Scott on the 6th (today) and myself on the 8th. Scott has reached the oh-so-mature age of 23, while I’ve passed the oh-so-legal 21 year mark. So Happy Birthday to us both, and here’s to another year of better and more organized college groups!

Here are some useful and just plain cool updates to Groupvine:

Blog or public Web site badges
Does your group have a public Web site and use Groupvine? Now it’s really easy to promote that on your public page! We have two flavors: a “join” badge and a “sign in” box.

How cool is that? Now you don’t even have to visit Groupvine’s site to get its benefits.

Simply click on the People, then Promote, or click the link on your group’s Overview page.

Note: these are both working widgets, and you can use them to join our “Demo” group.

Also, we’ve added:

• An easier invitation system: just enter straight email addresses, and as many as you want
• Public / private group classifications
• Big, bold numbers on the calendar to indicate when events are happening

About a month ago I did a survey for people using Groupvine and asked what you’d like to see added on. 

Here are the results!  (drumroll, please)…

Note that these results are displayed in percentages.

Comment or drop me a line (scotthurff at thegroupvine dot com) if you have any more ideas or recommendations.

What surprised me about the data is that there wasn’t much concern for text reminders or collecting / sending money online. While I was at Wake, people hated dropping off cash at random dorm rooms and always were texting each other. Now texting is even bigger.

Watch Screeniac’s coverage of Groupvine — they’ve got a great video of what’s it like to use.

Thanks Screeniac!

If you’re a Wake student, you may notice a small link in the “Quicklinks” box on student.wfu.edu.  This is only the beginning of a growing partnership between The Student, Groupvine and Wake Forest in general.

Thanks to everyone who helped make this happen.  It’s a great way to get those at WFU more exposure and more utility out of Groupvine. 

Traffic from WFU is already up 400%.

More to come soon.

More color, a clearer message and less clutter.

That’s the goal of Groupvine’s new public site.  To make it more obvious what Groupvine does, can do, will do and give people more ideas on how they can use it for themselves.

Some notable things:

• You can now sign up your group (a temporary system while we build a full-fledged one — and now’s a chance to get an unlimited account for free)
• A simpler, more direct main page
• The latest blog posts at the bottom of every page

I’m excited! 

There are some more improvements and new services coming — I wish I could tell you, but then I’d have to kill you.  Or something.

Until next time…

As it gets closer to the beginning of school for a number of people, we’re thinking about more and more ways to improve Groupvine.

So why not help us out?  It matters what you think about Groupvine, and I really want to make sure that we can capture your opinions.

Please take a second to fill out the survey below.  I’m excited to see what you think.

There’s some great news on the Groupvine front. 

Groupvine’s first customer, Wake Forest, created a committee on its Student Government to find ways to integrate the product more deeply into the everyday workings of the campus and its groups. 

Naturally, I’m really happy to see this. 

I’m excited to see where this goes, and to serve as a “moderator” of sorts for helping WFU and all the student groups there get the tools and do the things they need.

It looks like I’ll be on campus October 7 at the SG General Assembly to talk more about Groupvine goodness.  See you there?

There are many things in motion with Groupvine right now, and I thought I’d share a few of them.

• We’re soon going to be looking for some versatile, passionate, high-energy programmers who know their stuff when it comes to PHP, JavaScript, that trendy AJAX stuff, are passionate about building great Web apps, and want to work with a team of energetic people to create something great.  Also, being able to write well is important.  If you’re interested, email scotthurff | at | thegroupvine dot com.
• A lot of people think Groupvine is great, and we want to bring it to as many groups and people as possible.  Right now, we think the quickest way to do that is using things like blogs, talking directly with student governments, Greek and statewide organizations, and making it easy for people to spread the word.  In a short time, the site will also feature some in-depth stories of real people who use Groupvine every day in different ways.  Please comment if you have any ideas or experience on how to spread the word about Groupvine.
• The company has been working behind the scenes on a few important deals which will be announced soon — it’s getting exciting around here!

Update: there are now some testimonials from people using Groupvine now posted. Check them out!

Update II: Oh, and there’s a new, prettier forum now — and one that’s less spam-friendly. This is the best place to get in touch with other people using Groupvine, and it’s a good way to talk with us if there are any problems you have. That way, if someone else has the same problem, they can just read what you posted, for example.

Co-founder, editor and partner Ricky Van Veen at Collegehumor uncovers how to prank people with text messages.  (I’ve tried it…it’s hilarious).

Everybody knows prank calling died when caller ID started coming
standard on cell phones. But, just like Caitlin Cooper rising to the
occasion to fill the void left by her sister, prank text messaging is
here to rock your world. It’s so much fun.

Warning: it’s not G-rated if you have sensitive eyes.

Link: “No, Seriously. Is Your Refrigerator Running?“

I thought some things could be a little simpler on the home front, so I tweaked the site’s design a little bit — up top and at the footer on every page. 

Let me know what you think.  All ideas are welcome.

We’ve gotten feedback that sometimes email programs or people think Groupvine invitation emails are spam, so we’ve changed them to make it more obvious what they are.

Here’s an example email:

    From:       “Groupvine Invitation” <no-reply@thegroupvine.com>
    Subject:     Business Development has invited you to Groupvine
    Date:     June 19, 2006 11:58:03 PM EDT
    To:       your email
    Reply-To:       no-reply@thegroupvine.com

Hey Scott,

You have been invited to join Business Development on Groupvine from a colleague at Ohio State University.

Joining is easy — just go to http://www.thegroupvine.com and type in the following:

user: (an email)
password: (a password)

Groupvine is a place to run all your campus groups.  This isn’t spam!

Thanks!
The Groupvine Team