All you ‘Free’ users should head over to the Setup Wizard to add FriendFeed, so you can earn more credits with each shared bookmark.  Make sure to follow the special instructions.

• My Bookmarks
• Shared bookmarks processing engine
• Share Queue
• Quick Share
• Share Queue widget on Dashboard
• Daily email job
• Daily credit giver job for ‘Lazy’ users
• History – My Bookmarks
• History – Stats
• Setup Wizard – All social bookmarking account pages
• Setup Wizard – Add Bookmark
• Setup Wizard – Share

Hopefully you’ll notice improved response times throughout the site.  If you notice any bugs,  as usual please let us know.

So if you have a ‘Free’ account, head to the Setup Wizard and add it in so you get more credits for your efforts.

Well you’re in luck!  We now have a new option as part of the Setup Wizard which charges a small 1-time fee (currently $7) for us to create all your (17) social bookmarking service accounts.  This process can often take over an hour.  Luckily we’ve got a team of minions that are really good at it

Here’s what you’ll get:

• A new email address (either Gmail, Yahoo, or Hotmail) and password
• All 17 accounts created and email verified (unless any of the sites are offline)
• An email containing the credentials of your new accounts
• Peace of mind knowing it’s been done properly and no steps were missed
• Turnaround is typically within 24 hours

This is part of the latest release, v2.13.   Also, we’ve unfortunately had to disable the Faviki service as we were having technical issues sending it data.

They include:

• SiteSays social bookmarking service added.
• Faviki social bookmarking service added.  They’re pretty interesting as they use Wikipedia-concept tags, rather than just allowing anything and everything.
• Jumptags social bookmarking service added.
• Gravee social bookmarking service removed.  This is hopefully temporary…it seems that their site is infected with a trojan so nobody can register and it sets off virus scanners.
• Propeller social bookmarking service removed.  They didn’t seem too keen on the type of bookmarks coming from us – as they’re more of a “News” site – so we thought it was best to respect their wishes.
• Improved the Setup Wizard for Delicious-Yahoo linking to make it easier to use.

Here’s everything that was modified:

• Delicious <-> Yahoo OAuth integration is complete.  Everyone using their Yahoo account to sign into Delicious can now set it up.   I’m pretty sure I gained a few gray hairs working on this
• The social bookmarking service Bookmark4You now has a hyperlink to the user pages on the History – My Bookmarks and History – Shared Bookmarks pages
• Bug fixed on Share Queue and Quick Share pages which was setting a limit of 10 “I prefer not to share this” bookmarks.  Users who had clicked the button more than 10 times would still see the additional bookmarks.
• Setup Wizard enhanced so the flow was more sequential…Share and then Add Bookmark
• New registration pages added for the WSO
  

• Added Setup Wizard – the Setup Wizard is an easy, step-by-step process for getting your SocialAdr.com account full configured and ready to go.  It walks users through setting up the social bookmarking accounts, creating their first bookmark, and sharing their first bookmark.  It also keeps track of your progress so you can use it any time to check if you have anything you need to do.
• Added the ‘Prefer not to share’ button on the Share page – we know that sometimes there are links you’d rather not share, but you don’t feel that they rise to the level of abuse.  For those cases, we’ve added the ‘prefer not to share’ button, which will simply remove that link from your Share page so you won’t see it any more.
• Removed the bookmark ‘cell’ – This feature wasn’t adding much for our users (except sometimes confusion), so we simply removed it.  You bookmarks can still be placed into a state where other members won’t see them, but it is now indicated by a green light on your bookmarks page.
• Added the ability to ‘pause’ a bookmark – a paused bookmark is still in your account, but it won’t be made available for other members to share until you start it again.  This gives you much better control of exactly what’s being shared and when.
• Moved archived bookmarks – archived bookmarks are no longer listed on the My Bookmarks page.  They have been moved to their own page which can be accessed from a link at the bottom of the My Bookmarks page.
• Added the ability to Add as many Bookmarks into the system as you want.  Any over the “active” limit will just be automatically disabled.
• Added OneView social bookmarking site
• Added A1-Webmarks social bookmarking site
• Added LinkaGoGo social bookmarking site
• Disabled Bloglines site – This site was focused on RSS feeds, so we disabled it (for now).  Look for this to brought back in a different form in the future.
• Re-designed the accounts – we have removed the old Good and Awesome accounts (for new users) and replaced them with three new account types:
  • Link Builder
  • Link Addict
  • Linkaholic

  All of the new account types have an increased maximum number of bookmarks in the system, and an increased maximum number of shares.  The rate of return on share credits is now different per account type (Addict gets more credits per share than Builder).

• Free Accounts updated – free accounts have also been changed.  Like the other account types, they now allow more bookmarks to be stored and more shares per bookmark.  They have had their rate of return for share credits reduced.
• All account types have had their maximum shares per day set at 5.  This is primarily an effort to be more responsible with the social bookmarking sites, but will also increase the likelihood of logging in and finding you have enough items to share on any given day.

We’ve got a number of new features we’re pushing out, including three new social bookmarking services.  We are also turning off a couple of services, one because they’ve taken it down to revamp it and the other because it doesn’t quite align perfectly with our service.  Of course you’ll want to sign up for accounts with the new services so you can get the most bang for your buck.

Which leads me to a great new feature: the Setup Wizard.  The Setup Wizard is where all new users will be sent right after registering to help walk them through the process of setting up all the social bookmarking accounts, adding in their first bookmark, and sharing their first link.  We’ve heard from a number of members that it’s a bit hard to understand the system when you first sign up, so we’re rolling out the Setup Wizard to help out.

But you can use the Setup Wizard even if you’re not new.  It will show you at a glance which services you have accounts with and which ones you still need, and provide a quick and easy way to get your account completely up and running.

One revamped section of the site is the bookmark management area, reached by going to the ‘Bookmarks’ menu and then choosing ‘My Bookmarks’.  First off, we’ve simplified a number of things about how you work with bookmarks.  There’s no more ‘cell’ to worry about, no more activating and deactivating, etc.

You simply have links that haven’t hit the maximum shares yet and links that have and were archived.  On the ‘My Bookmarks’ page, all of your non-archived links are shown.  You can see what the individual bookmarks look like here:

You can see the little status indicator next to the name of the bookmark.  That will show green when it’s being shared, and gray when I don’t have enough credits.  The green arrow shows that I am currently allowing that bookmark to be shared – I can pause it any time I want.

We are also adding a new option on the Share page.  We’ve always had the ‘Abuse’ button, although it’s rarely had to be used.  Sometimes though, there are links that pop up that you’d rather not share but you don’t necessarily feel deserve the abuse button.  They can get lodged in the top of your Share page and prevent you from seeing other, more interesting links.

Enter the “I’d prefer not to share” button:

The unhappy looking fellow next to the abuse button will let us know that you’d rather not see that particular link anymore, and we’ll go ahead and remove it from your Share area altogether.

We’re also restructuring our accounts.  There are a number of specific issues want to address:

• Be more friendly to the social bookmarking sites
• Make sure people have items to share
• Reduce the work needed for our paying customers to get their links

Coming out of the upgrade tomorrow we will have 4 account types.  As I mentioned previously we’re going to be adjusting the number of credits received per share based on the account level.  So the free account will receive less credit in exchange for sharing compared with the paid accounts, and each level of the paid account will get more credit than the one below it.

Balancing this out, we will be reducing the number of shares per day allowed for all account types.  Many of the social bookmarking services consider sharing 20 items per day spam, and we definitely want to stay on their good side.  Besides, a banned account doesn’t help anyone out.

So our paid accounts will be able to share a reduced number of sites per day, but will be receiving more credit per share than previously.  In addition, we are raising the limits on the number of bookmarks you can store in SocialAdr at any given time, and raising the limits on the number of times each link can be shared.  We believe the net effect will be that all of our members will have their bookmarks shared more than they were able to previously.

For our existing members, we will be leaving your existing accounts as is for the duration of your current billing cycle.  After that, unless you let us know otherwise, your account will be upgraded to one of the new accounts automatically.  While prices are going up overall, your price is locked in and we’ll be honoring that through the upgrade.

This is the last major set of change we have planned before a major re-release and membership drive.  Once we come back up from the downtime tomorrow, I’ll post the full patch notes.  Let us know if you experience any issues or have other suggestions.