G-Snap! Blog

Here’s a scenario:

• You’re live blogging an event.
• In your web browser you have three tabs: 1, your G-Snap! console 2, your Twitter account and 3, your Facebook account.
• You are furiously switching tabs as you try to cover your live event by adding updates and corresponding with people on all three services (at the same time).
• You find yourself pulling your hair out because neither of the services are getting your full attention and your live blog is suffering as people slowly walk away.

Today, G-Snap! makes managing your social experiences during a live event much easier. As a first step to become your one stop social stop for your live events, it is now possible to push status updates from G-Snap! to Facebook, Twitter, and even Yahoo!. Simply select edit event status, type in a status update, and select the services you wish to push to. If you haven’t connected with these services in the past, you will be prompted to do so.

One tab, access to all your social accounts, and 100% focus on your live blog and your readers. Go ahead, dive in. Live blogging just got a lot easier with G-Snap!.

Comments/questions? Drop us a line. Or, create an event now and give this a try! http://gsnap.com

Hello everyone, hope you’re having a great Thursday!

Today, we wanted to let you guys know of a quick product update for our embedded widget. It is now possible for your readers to share your event with their Facebook and Twitter contacts directly from our widget. Our hope is that this gives you additional incentive to host your live events with G-Snap! and embed them on your own websites – where your regular visitors can help spread the word.

So, what’s the best way to leverage this new feature?

1. Go to http://gsnap.com and create your event
2. While filling out the Create Event form, make sure to specify your “live event url”. That is, the URL or the page where are you going to be embedding the event. eg. http://mysite.com/live
3. Grab our embed code (from the right hand side or the bottom of the page) and insert it into your site

Once you’ve done that, your regular website visitors can share your event to Facebook or Twitter by selecting the icons in the footer. That’s all it takes!

Enjoy folks. More good stuff coming soon.

Greetings everyone,

We’re excited to share with you some innovative enhancements to our service that are truly fantastic. If you haven’t come by to visit us lately, come on over and take a look at http://gsnap.com. You’ll be pleasantly surprised at how far we’ve come.

Engaging Your Readers
Our goal at G-Snap! is to create the tools and user experiences you need to give you a better way to connect with your readers in real-time in order to build deeper, longer lasting relationships. We do this in the hopes of opening up new revenue opportunities for your business. We believe the more engaged your readers are, the more value they get, the more likely they are to come to your future events and engage with your business model, ads, or sponsors.

Feature Update
As a result of our focus, today we are proud to introduce G-Snap! Polls. Polls will be a phenomenal new tool in your live blogging arsenal to help you reach your audience in new ways. Create and manage up to twenty polls, include one question, up to six answers, embedded media or even a YouTube video. You have to give it a try to see just how great – and easy – it is.

Secondly, launched just about a month ago, we developed a better system for your readers to comment in your events without requiring a G-Snap! account. This fundamentally removes any barriers that might have otherwise prevented them from participating. Coupled with our advanced moderation features, you are still be the one who decides who and what goes into your event.

Lastly, based on your great feedback, we have also released the ability to change the scheduled start time of your event and delete an event. As always, these exciting new enhancements are live today and available on our web, mobile, and embedded widget experiences.

Looking Ahead
The second half of this year contains some exciting new updates that will drive even more engagement with your readers. Until those are released, continue providing the valuable feedback you have been as that’s a big part of how we prioritize the product we’re building for you.

Thanks everyone. We couldn’t do it without you!

Ramsey Ksar
VP Product
G-Snap!, Inc.
http://www.gsnap.com

Hi folks,

Today we have a quick update from G-Snap! HQ regarding some exciting product upgrades that are now live.

Prior to today, commenting in a G-Snap! Event required your readers to have a G-Snap! account (or connected via Facebook, Twitter, Yahoo!) before they could submit their comment.  While this enforced a certain level of quality control, it restricted the flow of potential users who wanted to comment but didn’t want to bother with registering with yet another new service.  As a result, the new upgrades available today allow your readers to join your event, pick a nickname and send in a comment  – all without requiring an account.

As most of you know our focus is laser-like when it comes to designing the best experience for our users – especially for those that run events.  These event hosts should be pleased to know that there is *NO* incremental overhead as a result of these upgrades.  That is, comments from users without accounts can still be trusted, banned, followed, etc just as before.  This was not a trivial task but we’re glad we made the “experiential” investment.

Here are a few other upgrades that made it in to this release:

• For those of us who like a clean workspace, a delete button is now available in the pending comments list
• Accounts are no longer required to RSVP for an event (this should help you increase you event attendance)
• Performance and stability improvements (web experience loads much faster)
• Custom skinning of our widget experience (contact us for details)

As always, these upgrades were released on our web, mobile, and widget experiences.

The G-Snap! Team
http://gsnap.com

PS.  Just around the corner is a VERY cool upgrade.  I’m giddy just thinking about it.  $5 per hint. 

Check it out folks, G-Snap! is powering Motorola’s developer event in Mexico City.  The tour will continue on to Argentina and Brazil with more coverage powered by G-Snap! – all in Spanish and Portuguese (and the occasional English) of course.  That’s right, G-Snap! is now localized!  If you have any event you’d like to run in a language other than Spanish and Portuguese, let us know.

To check it out:  http://developer.motorola.com/eventstraining/summit/mexico10/

Howdy folks…just a quick note to let you all know that we have a tutorial we posted over at YouTube on our new Q&A feature.  Feel free to head on over to learn the ins-n-out of this new feature.  We’ll keep adding to the library over time.  For that matter, if anyone would like to help, let us know!  We’ll definitely consider all entries.  We’d love this to be populated with community video!  I have a few serious G-Snappers in mind…don’t make me call on you!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OfurW_iAdMo

Thx,

The G-Snap! Team

Start a live blog/event now!

Hello everyone, what an exciting day! We have some great product updates to tell you about. There a lot to read but we think it’ll be worth your while to browse through it all.

As a quick into, we’ve been very busy over the past few months. A fair bit of analysis has gone into our product, experience, business model and more forcing us to think outside the box, inside the box, around the box…basically, a lot of thinking. The first result? Well, a new version of our product of course that includes some slick new goodies. Well, what are they? Never thought you’d ask.

1. Updated Design: we focused here on creating a design that is easier to understand, utilized available space more efficiently (comments appear further up the page as compared to before), just better on the eyes.

2. New Moderation Modes: as we thought about how our product could be better suited for larger audiences (30+), a new mode for comment moderation became very apparent. Here’s how moderation works now on G-Snap!:

• Option 1, Moderation On: when “on” you’ll notice a column on the left hand side of the console consisting of comments pending approval by the event moderator(s). To make processing these comments easier, a new filtering option is available for comments, questions, or Tweets. Questions? More on that below…
• Option 2, Moderation Off: when “off” you are basically inside of a “live chat”. We think it’s important to give you this option and even though we don’t recommend “off” for large audiences, it does work well for smaller audiences.
• Option 3, Comments Disabled: If choice was a menu item, you’d be dining at Chez G-Snap! tonight. This option was requested by several of our customers so we’ve added it in for anyone to use.

3. Ask a Question!: this is one of our favorites for this release. The new G-Snap! Questions and Answers mode is there for a couple good reasons. A little history first. One of the problems we saw in previous events was that there was no distinct difference between a question and a comment…other than perhaps a question mark. Additionally, when a question came in and was answered by the event moderator, there was no context as, more often than not, the original question was below the fold and the answer above with no way to tie the two together. With the new Q&A mode set to “on”, a question can be entered as an actual question (by the moderator or viewers) by simply typing in a question and selecting “Ask a Question”. The moderator then has the ability to answer the question and when they do, the question AND answer appear as a single entity in the live stream. Neat huh?

Also, if the moderator assigns someone as a trusted user (such as a guest celebrity or topic expert), they can assign questions to the trusted user(s) so the actual expert can answer questions from the audience. Hopefully this will give you a few new reasons to use G-Snap! for engaging Q&A sessions with featured guests!

4. RSVP Count: so let’s say you create an event on G-Snap! and you set it for a future date. Viewers are sending in their RSVP but guess what, we didn’t tell you how many signed up! Ehh… Well, that’s taken care of now. From your profile page, or the event console, you’ll now find the RSVP count for events that start in the future.

5. Removed the 140 character restriction: it was just time. We love it. We’re sure you will too. Oh, we did increase the overall height of the comment area too to help.

6. New status feature: our status feature is an upgrade to our good ol’ “snapshot”. The upgrade consists of better placement and functionality. Give it a try, we think you’ll like it! Coming soon, you’ll be able to push your event status to Facebook or Twitter.

7. New Filtering options: ever wish you could just see the images in your event? Or perhaps turn off viewer commentary? Well, these options sort of existed before but are now there with a new look and feel. In addition, we’ve added Q&A as a filter option. This is a great tool for your viewers to use when your event is over. By selecting Q&A, they can see just the Q&A portion of your event without having to filter through the other comments.

8. Set your Embed URL: today, when events are created on G-Snap!, they are accessed via your G-Snap! profile (or perhaps via our Twitter or Facebook page). With the new embed URL feature, you can specify the website where your G-Snap! event will take place (if you choose to not host it with us) to ensure that any traffic from gsnap.com or any promotion we do, sends all the traffic to your live event page. Remember, we firmly believe that this is “your” event, your viewers, and the traffic should go to your website. Note, for the moderator, the event URL on your view of your profile will continue to point to the console on gsnap.com (as that’s where all the goodness happens). For your viewers though, they’ll be sent to your live event page.

9. Easier access to banning/trusting users: with the click of your mouse, it’s now possible to trust or ban users from your event. When moderation is on, you can ban and trust from the pending comments column. When moderation is off , you can hover over a viewer’s avatar and ban/trust them from there.

10. Updated method for hiding/showing messages: sticking with our goal of simplifying the experience, when a message is hidden it is gone. But wait, don’t worry. At the bottom of the live stream you’ll now find a link (on the console only) to view and “un-hide/show” hidden messages. Our goal with this feature, was to provide a clear model. That is, when moderation is on, unapproved comments are in the left column and approved comments are in the live stream. This way, you know exactly what your viewers are seeing and what they’re not!

Our Top 10 list covers all the big updates but this release also included a bunch of random bug fixes and minor tweaks.  Give the new updates a try and let us know what you think. They’re live and available on all our experiences – web, mobile, and our embedded widget.

As we mentioned at the very beginning, we’ll be rolling out our new and improved business model over the next month or so. While we work on that, there are a few other exciting features in the pipeline, including the ability to comment within a G-Snap! event without requiring a G-Snap! account, customization of our embedded widget, and more! Stay tuned folks, the best is yet to come.

Hey boss, can we sleep now? I mean, next feature comin’ right up!

-The G-Snap! Team

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Create an event now on G-Snap! @ http://gsnap.com

Check out a great article on mysanantio.com about a fantastic event called “A Todo Dar” that G-Snap! is a big part of.  Here’s the URL for the article as well as our press release (that comes out tomorrow).

http://voices.mysanantonio.com/sxswlive/2010/03/even-though-nan-palmero-and.html

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G-Snap! Showcases Snapcasting Technology at “A Todo Dar”, a SXSW Interactive Concert

March 19, 2010 — The South by Southwest® (SXSW) Conferences & Festivals taking place now in Austin, TX, FPO Marketing and their primary sponsor, Gibson Guitar, have tapped live interactive blogging company, G-Snap!, for their “A Todo Dar” interactive music concert on Friday, March 19th featuring top Latino artists from Movic Records including PXNDX, Insite, Los Claxons, and Nina Pilots.

G-Snap!’s Snapcast interactive technology platform will make it possible for fans all over the world to experience the “A Todo Dar” concert via a live interactive broadcast where they can see the performances and chat with other fans in and outside the venue.

“By bringing our events to life on the Internet, G-Snap! offers us a really innovative way for our audiences to engage with South by Southwest,” says Jaime Garza, General Manager of FP Marketing. “This innovative technology will play a key role in enhancing the experience we’ve created, and ultimately help us increase our reach and gain new sponsorship opportunities.”

With the simple click of a link, “A Todo Dar” fans will be taken to the live interactive broadcast destination where they can tune into the concert, check out what others are saying, and participate with their own comments, all without hitting the refresh button. G-Snap!’s innovative tools are ideal for any type of event because they’ve made it easy for anyone to report on news and events as they are happening, interact directly with their viewers, and add pictures and video imagery to their stories.

“Whether it’s major sports and entertainment events or breaking news, we are fundamentally changing how people consume content by delivering rich, real-time information that matters to them,” says Ramsey Ksar, Vice President of G-Snap! “We are excited to have the opportunity to be at SXSW and the “A Todo Dar” concert as this event is the blueprint for future concerts and other live events looking to increase audience interactivity, engagement, and monetization.”

Event Information
The “A Todo Dar” event can be found at http://atododarmusica.com. The live interactive broadcast begins at 7PM Central and can be accessed via the “watch” link.

About FPO Marketing
FPO Marketing (www.fpomarketing.com) has been creating multicultural marketing programs since their inception in 2004. A full service, award winning firm based in San Antonio, FPO has established itself as an agency that is not afraid to think beyond. FPO understands that successful brands are built on “ownable” and defendable communication pillars that have real meaning to consumers. We take over 60 years of combined experience in Hispanic and multicultural marketing and blend that with a youthful energy that embraces change. Brand planning and research, advertising and promotions, interactive and design as well as full service media, our collective team can develop, implement and mange every aspect the marketing communications process. FPO is headquartered in San Antonio, Texas with offices in Houston, Texas as well.

About G-Snap!
G-Snap! (www.gsnap.com) has developed a live interactive blogging platform that gives content publishers a better way to engage and connect with their audience. Whether it’s mainstream media journalists or citizen bloggers, G-Snap’s tools make it easy for any writer to cover news and events as they are happening, interact directly with their readers, and add pictures and video imagery to their reporting. The live blogging experience is changing how people consume content by bringing life to the Internet and captivating audiences like never before. G-Snap! is a start-up headquartered in Livermore, California.

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While you were hopefully enjoying a nice weekend, we rolled out a new feature we wanted to make you aware of.  In addition to Twitpic images now auto-rendering in the live stream, we now support yfrog and Flickr!  We hope this will encourage you to continue to use your favorite services while you’re on G-Snap!.  Here’s a snapshot of what the integration looks like:

How does this work?  Well, it’s quite easy?  Grab the “link url” from yfrog or a standard Flickr photo page URL, and drop it into the live stream.  After a few magical seconds, the link you pasted will auto-render into what you see above.  It’s really easy.  By the way, if these URLs come in as a result of a Tweet that you import, the photos will also auto-render.  Neat, huh?

Also, in case you haven’t noticed, it is now possible to sign in to G-Snap! with your Facebook, Twitter, and Yahoo! IDs.  With these services, we bring in your profile picture for you as your G-Snap! avatar (or you can choose to use your G-Snap! photo) as well as a few other features that will be coming out soon.  As always, we’re building this product and these features for you so if there’s something you’d like to see us build in, please let us know.  Your influence is a critical part of keeping this service what it is!

Next up for G-Snap! (other than raising our next round of funding) is a really exciting supersized feature/design update.  If you’re interested in being a part of the preview group, let us know.

Thanks everyone…

-The G-Snap! Team
http://gsnap.com

Feel free to stroll on over to George Drapeau’s blog to see what he has to say about G-Snap!.  And if you’d like, you can join his Snapcast of the Pac-10 championship blogged live right here on G-Snap! (http://gsnap.com/rich/1011).

The G-Snap! Team
http://gsnap.com