So, with all of the new, let’s take a moment to talk about what’s new.

We have been in the news

Eric Schonfeld gave us a nice start to the holiday season by featuring our Elevator Pitch. This was followed by Robin Wauters making note of a recent article we posted, in his piece, Six Reasons Your Web Startup Will Fail. Last week Brian Morton at The Vancouver Sun talked about what we’re doing in his article, Marketing as easy as counting to five; and, today Scott Stanfield and the folks back home at the Prince George Citizen also covered the things happening here (link to come).

And this is all really good for MakeFive! The more we spread the word, the higher the traffic, the bigger the community, the more lively the discussions. Plus, if we start seeing a little revenue from this thing, we can make it our full-time gig, which would be awesome. :-)

We have some new stuff for you

But alas, there has to be more to this post than just begging you to spread the word, right? Most definitely!

You likely noticed that the homepage changed again. Yes, it seems as though every two months that needs to be revised. We think the most recent iteration is a sound one though, and it’s directly informed from what you’ve asked us for: better features, easier navigation, less pink, and longer listings.

Today we’re “going live” with two other big improvements (we think). First off, we’ve added a rudimentary “Local” component to MakeFive that will filter things down to particular cities. We’re starting this out with a few of the major ones, but will add more if this works out. To get your topic on one of these pages, just make sure that you have the city name in the title. Without it, there’s no way for it to get there.

I should also note that many of these cities are empty. So, if you’re from one of these places, please get in there and share your suggestions. We all love to have good tips for places to visit when we visit a new town. (For example, we really like what’s going on with the New York page.)

Now, I have to say that this last change is one that I dislike for it’s clutter, but appreciate for its function. All of the topic pages have been changed to an “expanded” view. As such, you can now see more about each item, without having to click through. As noted, it’s not pretty, but it sure does make for easier browsing.

We have some new winners

And this post ends with a quick shout-out to the winners of the December contest. They are as follows:

1. webdesign (24,372 points)
2. srlong (16,501 points)
3. rdelucchi (15,130 points)
4. ecaggiani (11,696 points)
5. colbycheeseballowe (10,099 points)

Congratuations and happy January!