(mt) Media Temple would like to notify you and the Contacts on your Account of upcoming maintenance that may briefly affect one of your hosting related services.
DATE/TIME WINDOW:
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Friday, Feb 8th 2008 9:00 PM - Saturday, Feb 9th 2008 2:00 AM Pacific Time
I have heard loud and clear that people want the search back. It’s funny how before I would get complaints about how the search was inneffective. Now I’m getting complaints that there is no search!
Anyway…
I will be bringing the search function back tonight. It will be slightly different but it will be back.
So, feel free to stop stoning me via email. Kidding :)
Edit: New information regarding search
Findfocusgroups.com has received its latest update. We can call this Version 3.0.
I put a lot of thought into this new design. My new direction: Simplicity. From the start, I always tried to keep the site simple and easy to navigate, but I would still get weekly emails asking how to use it.
One common email was:
“When I searched my state all of the focus groups were expired.”
This was a common problem for cities that didn’t get many focus groups. For example, people would search for their state and try to access a listing that I posted in 2005. This is a main reason I removed the search function from the site. Understandably, I don’t want people to be directed to expired listings.
So, to reach the goal of simplicity, the site now has 4 pages of the most recently listed focus groups. From my own experience, I know that most studies get filled up within 2-3 days, so your best bet in getting a focus group is to apply only to the newest ones, not ones from several weeks ago. I don’t want the site’s users to waste their time signing up for groups that are probably already filled up. (Hopefully you agree.)
I also cleaned up the actual listings by taking out the Categories and Compensation columns. I felt the Categories were a bit redundant based on the listing title, while the Compensation was either not known or too vague. In other words, these two things just weren’t always as informative as I originally thought they were.
Alerts have been discontinued. The alert system was created to email visitors once focus groups were added to their city. The alerts became such a success that each city had hundreds (sometimes thousands) of people subscribed to an alert, which unfortunately ended up taking a huge toll on the email server. Consequently, not everyone got the email alerts at the same time, and I felt that was a little unfair.
Instead, visitors are now encouraged to sign up for the RSS feeds, which you can use to stay up-to-date with listings. Feeds have been created for the top focus group cities, while there is also a main RSS feed that informs people of how many focus groups were added to the site for the whole day.
Two new features I’m excited about are the ‘Share’ and ‘Report’ buttons.
Share - Ever see a cool focus group that you think your friends would be good for? Now you can send them an email about it directly from the site. You can even email yourself if you’d like to check out a focus group listing later on.
Report - Visitors should use this feature to alert me when a posting has expired. This will help keep the site clean and up-to-date.
Lastly, the site is more mobile friendly. Whenever you visit Findfocusgroups.com from a cell phone you will automatically be redirected to the site’s mobile version.
Well, that’s all for now. Please let me know if you have any comments or questions. Thanks!