Hello from the random tour bus

Thanks for releasing my account. I've avoided this site long enough to "grow up" or to grow out of a funk or something, anyhoo, I just wanted to say I love the changes. It seems to run rock-solid after my tinkering with the ancient exploits of yesteryear. :) Not to indirectly insult you, but Melo feels like a 'real social networking site' now, not just a project of a script kiddy. :-p In any case, I'm impressed. Keep it up. :)

Snail mail for elite payments by MO...ever?

yay radio show! if you're going to do it - i want my own show. i'll play rare 80's, minimal wave, post punk jams. and my other friend from melo can do korean and japanese pop. : )

hey there...i cant figure out while all my posts keep popping up two times. On the my melo option? any ideas? well i hope you are having a good friday!

in mobile, for touches and bangs (to avoid the multiclicking phenomenon) maybe have the link take you to a simple page with a "How many Touches/Bangs would you like to give this Post/Picture/Other?"

Last one, promise (for now)... TOURS!

The Random Tour is the coolest feature I've seen on melo since I started in 2003. The Karma incentives are just right enough to get people to waste hours of endless melo surfing reading through people's shit they may not have read otherwise.

I haven't played much with the picture uploading function (probably one of the things I most missed about Melo 1.0). I'm not sure if it's an elite-only function or not, but if people are uploading photos, maybe you can create a Photo Tour? Get more traffic into the photo real. Add a voting function to the photo's for interaction, Karma incentives, etc.

I've noticed over the years, that there are lots of people with Polls that never get much exposure. You surf to a newbie's Melo and there are maybe 4 votes on their obscure "Edward or Jacob" type polls. Maybe a Poll Tour would be awesome to get some traffic to people's polls, generate more visibility... With polls too, you wouldn't have to work in a 25 second delay before hitting Next. If they don't vote, they can't move on. :)

From what I hear, Twitter API is widely used throughout the intarwebz to integrate live updates. Maybe linking a melo to a twitter account and having a spot in the profile or a new box for twitter updates would be fun. Maybe even give Karma incentives to #Melo in their tweets?

Finally, a new feature I was thinking about the other day... being the former WoW dork that I was, a Melo Daily. Since Melo thrives on posts and content and getting people to read, comment, and debate, etc... maybe have a daily topic or weekly topic for people to post about, like an essay prompt. Post it, tag something specific to put it in the daily/weekly pool, and add extra incentives to encourage people to write posts relating to the Daily/Weekly topic, they have to "Daily Topic Tour" at least 10-100 other posts in the Daily/Weekly pool in order to get the incentive. Generate some community discussion. You can give monthly leaderboard incentives such as Daily Discussion Member of the Month, can't win more than once every 3 months (to spread the wealth)... I dunno. But it would give people a reason to come and interact every day/week, maybe hook people into some heated debates, get emotions running, generate hype, probably identify some new Melo celebs & greifers!!! Cuz we know how much melo loves her drama!

:D

If you couldn't tell, I've had a hardon for melo for 7 years. Facebook can't boast membership of 8+ years, a core of dedicated community members, or member driven workflow for bugs/fixes/enhancements.

Pay no mind to the woman behind the curtain.

Don't get me wrong, I know a little about web dev, but not anything spectacular. I'm an idea guy, and a network analyst at Novell for anti-piracy shit. Not much programming background...

As far as mobile, don't think of it as "integration", treat it as a different site with a dedicated CSS for smaller mobile screens, more in another post. You can't focus on building an app because you'd have to build a different app for every platform API (android, crackberry, iPhone, etc).

Build a simple home page (eg. mobile.melo.com) with a stylesheet meant to function on smaller mobile screens. Keep the content minimal.

To brainstorm mobile is to ask yourself what are we gonna use it for. Posting on the fly, Reading people's content, gspots, spreading karma (bang/touch). Keep the mobile function limited to just the core things until you're ready to build it more robust-like with fanciness.

In all, I forsee the following pages needing to be set:

Home Page: with Melo Logo, Simple Nav Bar, Jump to User, and either Recent Post stream or Melo MoTD. I'd avoid adding stats to the page just because the back-end "thinking" might bog down load time.

My Melo: Very simple 'Friend/Tab stream' and Profile Edit links (with an Editing subpage).

Sites: I'd limit it to one or two posts per page with a 'Next/Previous' linking mechanism to keep the loads small. I'd probably disable custom CSS for mobile just to keep it from messing up the mobile browsers. Gspots would be on a separate page if someone decided they wanted to read them, load time issues. I would maybe add a 50x50px version of the prof pic (or maybe thumbnail would be easier) to keep it personalized a little. At the bottom of each post, 3 links (Touch, Bang, Gspot).

Post Page: To post a 'Quick Post', WYSIWYG, no html. Text editor with submit or cancel links/buttons.

Gspot Page: gspots (public is really all that is necessary) as they appear today on the Public folder. Box at the top to submit a gspot, stream the rest below it, simple... with or without thumbnail pic. disabled HTML for sanity purposes. Maybe limit it to the most recent 10-20 gspots?

I'm sure there are other pages that could be interesting/necessary. I have a bunch in my head, but I've already typed a lot.

The coolest part about Mobil is how you can hook someone into using it continuously. I think that is where tours comes in (I'll post separately about this). Tell me what you think! :D If you wanna talk more and less publicly, I'm Myles Anderson on FB and you're already my friend so send me a message.

then she's like BLAM! and her head explodes. irony on so many levels.

http://img.melodramatic.com/img/pr0mqueen/sxluxutux lol. at that file name.
i couldn't even imagine what that photo is, at least it isn't a generic name. lol

well, ah now i am back to sorting and re tagging old entries. yay

NONONO. my transaction history is 100 % accurate. I think i was on an internet haitus in 2006/2008..

i seriously don't remember what i did those years. i don't have any glitches..

If i give you the file name of one or 2 of the photos, do you think it would make it easier for you to scan your hard drive? it could help you find what your looking for?

here's a work order for you: take ten minutes to feel awesome.

i kind of have a meloversary calendar of my friends stuck in my head now.
now i want it.

also, i would love for you to go to the PeeWee Herman show and get pictures taken with him and make him pimp out the site. i would love that so very, very much.

I'm glad you pwn and not pawn computers.

don't forget to dance

I just wanted to say thanks for whatever it is you did that made my "My Melo" page stop listing all my new posts twice! :)

Don't get hung up on features on facebook or myspace or anything else. We don't want Melo to be polluted with unoriginal ideas.

Melo is, and forever will be, unique and 100% built by you and the community. I think Melo has an awesome niche. It's like a social-networking blog site with live data-streaming. Places like Facebook and Myspace have blog functionality, but they're hidden away. Myspace is nothing but static profile and back-end private data stream. Facebook and Twitter have the public data stream "micro blog" thing going. Blog sites like Wordpress or Blogger are strictly blog with minimal community and social-networking functionality... Hell, even old school LiveJournal pales in comparisson to the multifunction of Melo.

Melo is sorta data-stream, privately, via My Melo. Overkill on the data stream isn't necessary. That's what facebook is for... or Twitter. There is a public timeline, polls, stats, etc on the Melo Home Page, like Twitter's. There is a static profile, similar to Myspace, but not bogged down with too much profile real estate. You can blog... or post, or micro-blog, whatever suits your orgasm. You can post pictures, you're not bound to the style and can adjust the colors/css. You can create folders, themes, almost like your own personal website. Melo is perfection; the perfect blend of ideas and functionality that you'd normally have to sign up for 6 different websites to enjoy separately.

Melo is the end-all. It emphasizes the best qualities those other sites have, but effortlessly and in synergy with eachother. And the coolest part, you did it on your own with no outside influence.

:)