I was thinking a lot about how I could keep all the initial users updated on what we are doing here and how to answer as many questions as possible. And I decided that using my own blog on Profy for this is a good idea to answer questions because I guess that many users have similar questions and thus will be interested in the same issues. So I am starting the series “Talking to Profy users” with answers to the first feedback I received from Justin Flowers, Interactive Marketing Specialist at Resercom.

So here is what he had to say about the newly released in alpha Profy blogging platform (lots of useful things if you want to know my opinion) and what I can reply to him and everyone interested:

Here's my feedback on Profy.

Reader -
The reader is the first thing I looked at. It looks like it has a lot of potential. The first thing I noticed is that the expanded view, at the bottom of the reader, is hard to spot. The second thing I noted was that there are no keyboard shortcuts, and because I'm used to Google Reader's "J," "K" and spacebar shortcuts your reader felt a bit cumbersome.

 Overall, the reader looks nice and the expanded view works really well, even the location of the expanded/list view link can be gotten past once it's spotted, but it's crucial for someone like me, with well over one hundred feeds, to be able to use keyboard shortcuts.

 
I can agree 100% that for a power user being able to use keyboard shortcuts is something we are really used to and we definitely have this on the roadmap. It has proven to be more difficult to implement than we expected so we decided to launch alpha without the shortcuts but we will add this ASAP.

Right now we decided to offer some more advanced features to sorting items in your feeds – for example, reading the posts from a certain period of time only.

As for the location of the expanded view link, putting the link in the header seemed to make the reader look rather crowded so we have decided to put it where it is and see if users will manage to change their habits. After all, we have a tabbed interface already and adding an extra tab (Google Reader style) definitely is not right.

Blogging -
The blogging platform is fairly easy to work through. The tabs are all very understandable and easy to navigate. The write tab makes sense, and I like the ability to switch between the WYSIWYG editor and the plain HTML editor. I really like the ability to easily import YouTube videos with the push of a button and the image button is also pretty straight forward. The only problem I foresee with the way it is now, is that there doesn't seem to be anywhere to locally store images.

Yes, we have tried to make the tabs as understandable as possible. I guess the best idea is that the ‘Write’ tab permits you to navigate to other tabs (to answer comments, search for the posts you want to link to and configure settings) without having to save the post – when you return to the ‘Write’ tab you will find the post exactly how you left it and can resume editing.

We have also tried to make use of your own multimedia content as easy as possible. We understand that the ability to upload your own images is important to some users but at this early stage we can not afford to offer storage space to all the users. We will eventually add upload and storage of multimedia content but chances are it will be a paid-for option.

The dashboard is very useful and an easy way to spot anything that has changed (feeds, comments, etc).

Yes, this is the main idea behind Profy – you can do everything within only one browser tab never having to move to another application. And on the dashboard you will be able to see all the changes and go directly to the sections that require your attention (reply to the new comments or messages in the inbox, for example).

Overall, this isn't the type of platform that I would generally use, but I say that mostly because I think the blogging platform is too elementary for my needs. I love the idea of combining the reader and the blog - it seems to make perfect sense.

I think I should mention here that we have only coded about 20% of the roadmap so the platform will become more sophisticated. Right now we understand that it appeals mostly to the beginners but eventually we promise that even the power users will be happy with the functionality. This is why we are so happy about your feedback – we need to know what parts of the roadmap we should focus on.

Here's what would make me use this service:

A stronger blogging platform with more options and the ability to create my own templates and edit them etc.

Storage (images, etc)

Keyboard shortcuts, for the reader primarily, but also they would probably be useful everywhere.
Integration with other services.  I know this is a stretch and probably not something that you're in a position to work on - but, if I combined my blog and reader and a somewhat limited social network I would want to be able to combine everything else there as well. (Facebook notifications, my email, etc)

Yes, we realize that we have a long way to go to suit everyone’s needs here but this is what we are going to do. And while some of the features only depend on us, integration is the key to success as we see it. This is why as soon as the platform is ready, we will focus on integrating lots of services here for your Profy dashboard to actually become your one and only dashboard for the web.

I think you have a solid product idea with Profy, and I look forward to seeing where it goes in the future.

Thank you for the kind words and for the valuable feedback, I promise we will not disappoint you with our future development.

Dear testers,

We have finally uploaded a new release of the product that includes a number of bug fixes and the results of our long-time optimization efforts. Besides, we have finally moved the product to ServePath which should also improve the general speed problems. So these results are finally here for all of you to test and I will really appreciate you taking a moment to follow these steps:

1. Logout from the product
2. Clear cache in your browser
3. Login again using Firebug or some stop watch to measure the time it takes for the dashboard to load

I would love to get the results from you in the comments below, on your Profy blogs or by email - any way that suits you better.

As always, I appreciate your support and your involvement in helping us make Profy better and bring it to the state when it is ready to be shown to public.