'General' Category

Invitation Improvements

You're invited gold glitter message

Few things make us happier than when you invite your friends and family members to join you here at Spokt. The invitation process has worked pretty well for years but there are a few pain points. We have been making improvements to how our invitations work and we want to let you know the news.

When you invite someone to Spokt we send them an email message. Sometimes the messages are not delivered to the recipient’s inbox. Last year our developers spent a considerable amount of time improving our message delivery rates and made great progress. Realistically, the delivery rate can probably never reach 100%. If your invitation doesn’t reach the intended recipient you can always click the “Having Trouble?” link next to the unaccepted invitation and deliver the message yourself via text, letter, carrier pigeon, or from your own email account.

Another problem that may occur is that the recipient gets the email but doesn’t “get it.” Maybe they mistakenly think it is junk mail. Maybe they don’t think they don’t have time. Not everybody “gets” Spokt and that’s okay. The best way to help these people accept your invitation to Spokt is to let them know it’s coming. Tell them to look for it so they can be ready to give your Spokt hub a chance.

If your invitee didn’t encounter either of the previous two problems there is one more possible friction point: Sign Up. This isn’t usually a big problem; Historically 80% of people who clicked the invitation link signed up for Spokt. Most of the 20% who did not sign up probably just didn’t want to. However, we know that a small number of people have wanted to sign up but had trouble. Our support team has been able to help those who came looking for help but we hope that the new changes we’ve made to our invitation system will help even more people.

The new invitation system does not send a link and invite the user to sign up, instead a user account is created from the get-go, a username and password are generated and sent to the invitee. They won’t need to sign up, just use their username and password to log in. It’s simpler for them and we hope this will help your Spokt hubs by bringing in more people whose voices are missing from your conversations.

Promote Your File Cabinet

Most of Spokt’s users are building a rich family history simply by keeping in touch. They post news and photos and over time a wonderful history is recorded.

There are also people using Spokt to store family history from the past. These are serious genealogists or family historians and it’s great that both types of family history can be recorded on Spokt’s platform.

Today we announce an enhancement that any hub can use but we think will be most used by this second group of more serious historians. You can now promote your File Cabinet to a first class posting type, just like News and Photos.

Promote Your File Cabinet

The steps to make this happen in your hub are:

1. If don’t already have a book called “File Cabinet” create one by adding any existing post to a book called “File Cabinet” or post something new.
2. Visit the “Manage Hub” screen, you’ll see the option to “Make File Cabinet More Prominent” near the bottom.
3. Select “Yes” This will add a “File Cabinet” section to the main navigation for all members.

Multi-Photo Posts

We love sharing photos on Spokt. We see recent photos on the hub home when we log in, we see old photos show up in the “Remember This?” and we can even feature photos on our hubs as well.

The top most requested feature we have received is for the ability to upload multiple photos to one post and today you can!

Our development team worked hard to make this as simple as possible. Try it out for yourself in your hubs today, you should find it is just as easy as posting a single photo. If you want to see it in action watch this Demo video:

Enjoy!

Here is a screenshot of the new photo posting screen:
UI to upload multiple photos.

Good Feels #13: We Are Family

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[via reddit]

Good Feels #12: People Holding onto Man Trying to Commit Suicide

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[via reddit]

Good Feels #11: Delivery Love

I love getting packages delivered by the US Mail, UPS, Fedex, etc. Here is someone who started expressing that love to the hard-working delivery men and women.

Delivery Love

[via reddit]

Good Feels #10: 12-year-old Girl Invents Fast Lead Detector

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In 2014 the source for drinking water in Flint, Michigan was changed and residents were exposed to high levels of lead in their drinking water. A federal state of emergency was declared and residents were instructed to drink bottled water.

Gitanjali Rao heard about these events and invented a lead detecting device at the age of 12. Instead of a several day process to send samples to a lab and get results back, her device detects lead in seconds using carbon molecules.

[original story]

Good Feels #9: An elderly man sitting outside of his car door spoon feeding his wife ice cream

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[via reddit]

Good Feels #8: Paramedic Heros

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An elderly man had a heart attack while shoveling his driveway. Paramedics took him to the hospital, then returned to finish shoveling his driveway for him.

[original story]

Good Feels #7: Syrian Refugee Giving Back to Germans

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Alex lost everything and fled his home country to arrive in Germany. He doesn’t have much but he feeds people in the street every Sunday.

[original story]