More About Invitations
We have been getting a number of questions (and comments ) about invitations and I wanted to take some time to discuss what we're up to. Believe us, we want to let you invite as many of your friends and family as soon as possible. But we also want to make sure that everyone's first impressions and overall experience with Vox are just right.
Vox is still in its early stages of development and very much what we in the industry call a beta service. Our wonderfully talented engineers have worked hard to make sure that every part of Vox will scale as traffic and usage grows and we've tested as much as we can to make sure it will scale. But certain things can only be tested when real customers (you!) start to use Vox. And that's what we're doing right now (starting to feel like a guinea pig?).
The good news is, so far so good! Our servers have managed to handle the load admirably and we've been extremely pleased with the performance. As a result, I'm happy to announce that we're going to give all standard account customers as of noon pacific time today two more standard invitations. Use them well!
Over the next few weeks, we will continue to give out invites as we feel comfortable with the site's peformance. We won't always give all Vox customers invites like we're doing today -- we want to encourage people to post, comment and bring new friends and family in and we will be rewarding those who do with more invites than those who don't (really starting to feel like a guinea pig yet?).
On a related note, we are reading all of your feedback about the problems with starter accounts and know that there are some issues (can I mention again that we're in beta?). We are working to make the upgrade path from starter to standard account easier, and hope you will continue to use starter accounts as a way to introduce your friends and family to Vox. As you probably know, you have an unlimited number of starter invitations.
As added incentive to invite your friends and family into the starter level, I'd like to let you know that from time to time during our beta period we will upgrade selected starter accounts to standard accounts. In fact, to thank our starter account customers for putting up with the confusion while we sort things out, we are also going to upgrade all starter account holders as of noon pacific time today to standard accounts. Because of some additional work we need to do to make that happen, the upgrade won't happen until Monday. But we hope you starter account folks will all enjoy your new blogs and the full feature set of the standard account level.
Most importantly, thank you all for using Vox! We're all having so much fun here at Six Apart HQ reading your feedback and your posts. We can't wait to show you more of the goodness we're working on.
- Andrew
Comments
great news! I can't wait for Vox to grow some more!
this is awesome news! I have a good amount of people interested!
This is a great update -- it's nice to see that the invites are slowly rolling out, and nicer to hear about all the things you've done/are doing to introduce more people to Vox.
Thanks for letting me be a part of this! :)
I really appreciate the lack of massages in vox.
Hurray, that's awesome.
Yipee!
That is awesome!! I cannot wait to see more from you guys very soon!!
Awesome! Totally awesome!
/Jeff Spicoli
Thanks!
Quick question from a Starter member. Is the only route to Standard status through the person who originally invited me? I need to know whether I have to bug the kind soul who sponsored me, or if I can find another route.
Thanks, though, for all the hard work.
I'm basically echoing the commenter above -- is there a way to sign up/show interest in being upgraded? I'm really excited about Vox, and would love to take advantage of the blogging and photo side of it.
Bill and Gwen... anyone with a standard invite can upgrade you from starter to standard. They just need to know the email address on your account.
Great!!!!!!!!!!! VOX ROXsssssssssssssss
Kinda funny how the link to starter accounts goes to a place wherein normal people can't read... =( Just got my starter account and trying to see what it is versus what standard accounts are.
As another new "starter" account - I'm doing my research diligently - but I'd suggest maybe a quick blurb about the 'limitations' of starter accounts ought to be added to the confirmation page when signing up.
Maybe just a quick
"So you're signed up - here's what you can do - here's what you'll need to wait until you've gotten a standard account to do..."
thanks for the invite. all i can say is that you people did a fantastic job of integration! i'm sure you'll iron out the kinks as you go along. here's my first impressions.
keep up the great work. godspeed.
~C (for Cool blogging tool to rule them all)
Thanks for the invite. Hope to get a standard account soon!!
When I'm signed in, I see at the vox home page that I can invite others. But, when I click the link to do so, I discover that I have 0 invitations left to hand out!
Yet, I've never handed out any invitations at all.
It would be better, if I don't have any ability to invite people, not to be encouraged to do so!
Otherwise Vox=awesome, btw.
Given that Vox is still in a 'beta' stage I'd like to add:
I'm new here, and started with 0 invites. At first I felt like my hands were tied because I really wanted to go crazy and invite all my friends, but because I'm having to wait and actually think about it, I think this is actually better for Vox. Yes, at first invitations seem like a bother, but if you've never had your own website you don't understand that open accounts would be awesome, but really just end up making the service less useful for those who actually thoroughly enjoy it for what it is.
Think about keeping invitations forever rather than allowing unlimited accounts. Vox is a great free service and I'm sure anyone can agree that they'd hate to see the servers slow down and usernames be taken just because of some greedy people. Vox will grow on its own simply for being a great service with awesome features!
- Brigit
Did I mention that I love the features?!