The MakeFive Blog

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. :-) (more…)

Working on MakeFive can be a little strange, as it’s something so different. We’re not really modeling it on anything that already exists, which means that we’re really trying a lot of different things to see what works. A few weeks ago we realized that although the community component is working well, we have to spend a little more time thinking about you… the individual.

As such, I’m happy to unveil some of the features we’ve added to MakeFive today. (more…)

Another month and more winners on MakeFive! It’s always great for us to see you guys getting excited about the site and spending your spare time on it!

Here’s how November played-out on MakeFive:

1. mdudlik (14,318 points)
2. webdesign (14,026 points)
3. geediu (12,589 points)
4. ninky (7,820 points)
5. michelle_3_16 (6,362 points)

Two issues arose this month around the contest, and as such, I wanted to address them. (more…)

Want to know what’s going on at MakeFive? Want to know all the time? Well no problem–all you had to do was ask! Just follow our Twitter feed where we share the newest topics as they happen!

Just click here: www.twitter.com/makefive and get ready to share in some sweet and sticky Twitter/MakeFive love. (On the bed, on the floor, on a towel by the door, in the tub, in the car, up against the mini-bar…)

We’re big fans of Michael Arrington and Erick Schonfeld’s website TechCrunch. It’s a blog that showcases news on tech startups, and I start most days by reading it. They still haven’t talked about MakeFive, which we think is just plain crazy, but we figure that they’ll get on board one of these days. ;-)

Their new project “Elevator Pitches“, allows startups to tell their story in 60 seconds, and get feedback from the TechCrunch community. Needless to say, when we wanted to get in on it. (more…)

As many of you know, the contest at MakeFive has been a point of contention for some time around here. I’ll be honest with you; it gives me a complete and utter headache. Most of the time it works well; but, every once in a while we get one user who chases points, creating crap just to try to win.

We’ve spent countless hours trying to figure out how to address this thing, but are at a bit of a loss. As such, we’ve decided to go the easy route and just give away more stuff. So, for November we’ll be giving away t-shirts for the month’s trendsetters, as well as a “big prize” for the person with the most points. (more…)

Doesn’t it suck to find out that someone’s been talking to you, and you didn’t even get the message? Well, that happens a lot on MakeFive, but I’m happy to say that a fix is on its way!

In the next couple of days, Topic Notification will come online. This means that when a topic you have created or commented on receives additional comments, the system will let you know. Not only is it a great way for you to track the success of your contribution, it also encourages dialog pertaining to topics you’re interested in!

Of course, the issue here is that we don’t want these notifications to become a burden. As such, if you ever want to stop receiving them, just click the link in the email you receive to modify the frequency of your notifications.

Do you like the idea of notifications? Please comment below.

October was a solid month on MakeFive. Lots of interesting topics and a few new members have become really active on the site. I think we can safely say that the site is starting to “connect”, and a few of you seem outright addicted! (It’s okay though… we like to see you online for hours at a time!)

So as for points, here’s how the “What do you know?” contest wrapped up…

1. webdesign (16,081 points)
2. aaronmalys (13,023 points)
3. mdudlik (10,570 points)
4. BnafetS (7,205 points)
5. DoeFromTO (6,371 points) (more…)

We get a little “evil” at MakeFive for this… an edition of MakeFive TV darker than Vincent Price’s skiffies. Sit back, relax, and pour yourself some fresh gruel. We’ll serve-up the top five costumes, pumpkin carvings, and horror films, all in the spirit of the season. And all of it comes with the cheese sandwich that the MakeFive crew is famous for. Boua-ha ha ha ha! Boua-ha ha ha ha!

Just a general “FYI” to the MakeFive Community: we do know that points are problematic. To be frank with you, it’s just a harder thing to remedy than it may appear from the outside. Additionally, we’re really concentrating on notifications/video, and as such points won’t be addressed for a little while yet.

As noted in the blog post earlier this month, we’ve known that there are problems with the point system, and I suppose that today’s dialogue confirms this. As a result, we’re doing a bit of a “system over-ride”. This month the top-five winners in the contest will all receive the coveted MakeFive t-shirts; however, we’re mixing things up this time, by giving the iPod to the person who creates the most interesting topic this month. (more…)