Collective Detective Blog Archives

Collectivus: Six Months Ago…

Hey gang!

Six months ago we launched the prototype release of Collectivus. In that time, we’ve released hundreds of Thingies into the wild. Some have travelled as far away as Turkey and Australia, many have journeyed all over the country, some have been hijacked by children, two confirmed cases of being eaten by dogs, some appearances at Philadelphia Union soccer matches, and a lot of them wound up playing in the snow. Most of them seem to be photogenic judging by all the pictures that get posted.

We introduced people to Collectivus through care packages sent all over, handed them out to hundreds of people on the streets of Austin at SXSW, and spoke about them in front of the Executive MBA class at Villanova.

It’s been a wild half-year!

As someone who has spent literally years thinking about this project: thank you! Thank you for reading this post. Thank you for posting your Thingie encounters. Thank you for the feedback and most importantly the support.

So if version 1 was a "prototype of a beta," what next? Well, version 2 is in the works and hopes to be a "beta of a beta." We’ve taken your feedback and the data we’ve collected and went back to the drawing board on certain features. We’re also working on features we’ve had planned all along. We’ve more than doubled the team that worked on the fist version and we have a ton of ideas we can’t wait to get to.

Speaking of feedback. We finally figured out how to send a newsletter. Please check your email for a link to a survey. We could really use your two-cents to help us improve the next version.

We think we’ve got a formula to make the next version of Collectivus even more fun, more interesting, and more interactive. Soon, we’ll find out.

We know things have been quiet on the blog, but that’s because we’ve been working on what’s next. Keep an eye out for information on the new Collectivus and meet more of the crew working on the project in “Team Spotlights.” You can also get updates by following Collectivus on Twitter and liking the Collectivus Facebook page. We also now have a Collectivus Photo Pool on Flickr.

Thanks again!

Thingie Watch: Summer 2010!

The summer season is upon us once again! The kids are out of school, there’s beautiful weather, weekend cookouts & Jimmy Buffet is on heavy rotation on iPods across America! With the summer comes awesome Summer Fun, and for Collectivus users: a great chance to give some Thingies a little well-earned fun in the sun! Let’s take a look at some interesting locations our Thingies have seen so far this summer!

Anna had to be rescued from
Goofy at Disney World in Orlando, FL.

Cosmo hung out at Deep Creek Lake in McHenry, MD.

Awesome attended the home opener of the Philadelphia Union at PPL Park in Chester, PA.

Ford attended a wedding and a cook-out around Reading, PA.

You can find the latest encounters from the Thingie page on Collectivus.

Collectivus: The First Sixty Days

On January 26^th we flipped the switch and released Collectivus. We wanted to provide an update of some of the happenings since our 15^th day report.

Photographs

As mentioned in our last post, the percentage of people taking and posting pictures with their Thingie encounters is higher than we thought. We’re going to work to make it easier to add photos to encounter entries.

Traveling Companions

People are fond of their Thingies. Many people are wary to give them to someone or leave them somewhere, but instead carry their Thingie around and post about their ongoing adventures together. We’ll look at adding a new encounter type (saw, received, gave, etc.) to better categorize this kind of activity.

We dropped off a whole bunch of Thingies in Austin last week and as people return home to places all over the globe, they’re bringing those Thingies home with them.

Thingies have traveled as far as Europe and Australia already!

Inventory

In the excitement to share Thingies, people were leaving them places or giving them to people without posting the encounter first. This lead to an issue where the code needed to enter the encounter was no longer in the person’s possession.

To help with this, when you receive or take a Thingie, we add it to an Inventory drop-down. To enter an encounter, you can just select the Thingie instead of having to re-enter the code. When your Thingie moves on, it is removed from Inventory.

Bug Fixing

We’ve fixed quite a few bugs and are working on addressing other known issues. We appreciate everyone’s patience while we work out the kinks. While containing a cute picture to look at, we know that landing on the error page is frustrating.

What Next?

Without getting too specific, we have a couple of items we’re still working on as part of this first set of features.

We’ve also begun the design phase of the next part of the roadmap. You’re going to see a lot of your feedback implemented and we’re going to take the wraps off of the next part of our vision for Collectivus.

As we mention often, the Collectivus you’ve seen so far is just the start. We’ve done maybe 5 percent of what we’ve got planned so far.

Will There Be More Rubber Duckie Thingies?

All of the Series One Thingies have not yet been released, so there’s still a chance to get your hands on some that have a "new duckie" smell. We’ve been working on some wildly different concepts for the second series; we’ll keep you updated.

We did get some very helpful feedback on what information and format to use for the instructions and codes on the Thingies. The layout and information for series one was part guess, part dictated by the design and material of the Rubber Duckie Thingies; series two will be a different design.

Thank You

We want to thank everyone for the comments, feedback and support. We’re happy so many of you are enjoying Collectivus and we’re very appreciative of that. We’re working hard to make Collectivus a fun, social location experience. Stay tuned for more news and announcements.