Ditto Blog

Archive for February, 2008

  1. On second thoughts…

    OK. We’ve had a rethink (mainly due to a bit of early feedback - thanks), and we’re considering not putting your photo at the top of a chart you’ve created. Why? Well it’s like this…

    The simple reason is: you start a chart, and your picks, as they do now, live on your profile. The chart that appears under your pic - like the example we stuck on the previous post - will be the aggregate of everyone’s picks. You know, like a chart. So it’s possible that having kicked off the debate on the most romantic movies of all time, your least favourite romantic movie of all time might actually be voted to the top, and there it is, sitting under your photo.

    Under our new thinking, if you start a chart, you’ll still get the credit, your name will still be up there in lights* and people will still be able to click a link to see your original list on your profile, we’ve just toned the whole ‘ownership’ aspect. You get to start the chart off, but once you release it out there into the wild, it’s not really ‘your’ chart anymore, everyone’s allowed to vote on it (and, in fact, the more people that vote on it the more ‘famous’ it gets and the higher up our list it will go…).

    Does this make sense? That’s where we’re at at the moment anyway. Let us know what you think…

    * May not actually be in lights

    Posted at 5:04 pm on 25/02/08

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  2. Make your own topics? Sure, why not?

    One thing that’s really stood out in all the feedback we’ve received is that you lot would like to be able to make up your own topics for other people to fill in. Well never let it be said we don’t listen. Below (click on the heading above to see the whole post) is a sneak preview of one of the pages from Ditto beta (it’s only a rough mock-up - don’t read too much into it), showing how it will look once you’ve created a topic.

    listHome[1]

    As you can see, Ditto user ‘Emily’ (you’re not fooling anyone, Jennifer…) has started her own topic, told us why, and kicked it off by picking her 12 favourites*. Yes, 12. That’s another Ditto blog exclusive - we’re getting rid of the ‘top 5′ restriction. In Ditto beta you’re free to pick your top one, two, three, five or 100.

    So, what do you think? Any questions?

    * Further investigation reveals that since Emily kicked it off, other users have added another 63 romantic movies, and cast over 1,000 votes for the most romantic movie of all time.

    Posted at 5:59 pm on 19/02/08

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    Comments: 4

  3. Ch-Ch-Ch-Changes…

    You may have noticed we’ve eased up on adding new features and content to the site over the last few weeks. We haven’t been hibernating (though it’s a nice thought…), quite the opposite: major changes are afoot, and instead of our usual ‘add it when it’s ready’ (or, sometimes, just before) approach, we’re going to be overhauling and re-designing the whole site and launching it as ‘Ditto Beta’ in the near future.

    So what changes can you look forward to? The most obvious thing will be Ditto’s focus. Although our members will still have all the features and benefits they’re used to (and Ditto beta will both add more and refine the ones we’ve got), our primary goal is to make Ditto useful for everyone, members and casual users alike.

    We want Ditto to be somewhere people can come and both make, and get recommendations - whether it’s a new all-time favourite or just something to watch this weekend. It’s always been our intention to make Ditto the best place on the web to discover new stuff – hopefully the new changes will get us closer to that goal.

    So what do you think? Is Ditto moving in the right direction? Got any other thoughts on things we should be working on? Tell us below…

    Thanks,

    John

    PS. I’ll be back soon to explain in some more detail the changes we’ll be making, and how all our recommendation witchcraft will work…

    Posted at 2:43 pm on 12/02/08

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    Comments: 5

  4. Hello, and…

    …welcome to the Ditto blog. Ditto is a brand new concept in entertainment navigation. As it says on our homepage, “Ditto is a fun way to share your pop culture passions and in return discover new things to love”, which pretty much sums us up.

    We’re still in pre-beta mode at the moment, so apologies for the rough edges. This blog is where we’ll be documenting our plans for the website and keeping our members, users and interested parties informed as to the work we’re doing and the features under development.

    It’s also a place where you can give us feedback on the stuff we’ve done so far, comment on the ideas we’re working on and make suggestions that will help shape the future of Ditto.

    Thanks for reading,

    The Ditto team

    Posted at 5:45 pm on 1/02/08

    Comments: None