Recently in Sausage making Category

Thanks to our very observant members, they have helped us discover two very tricky and annoying bugs.  Well that is one reason we are still in Beta.  I am going to describe the bugs here.  We are working on them and should have them fixed soon.  Will update here and Twitter when fixed.

Expired listings still showing up as active.  On certain partner listings, the Kashless.org system tries to keep the status of listings on our site in sync with the master listing on partner site.  For the last four weeks or so, this process has been broken on a large number of listings.  This has resulted in people trying to make offers on listings that are expired.  This can be frustrating.  We have identified the cause of the bug and are fixing it.

Messages not getting through.  When you press “contact giver” on a listing, if the listing is from a Kashless member, the message is delivered immediately, if it from a partner site, we have to figure out the e-mail address to send it to and deliver it outside our system.  For certain partner sites, this process has been broken for the last couple of weeks and we only recently noticed it.  This meant that people were sending messages, getting no response and wondering what was going on.  We are used to some people simply not responding, but not 100% non-response.  Well, the mails were getting dropped.  Our systems didn’t receive any error messages, so it was a hard problem to figure out.  We have figured out the source of this bug and are also working on a fix.  Sorry for the inconvenience, but any messages sent to partner listings over the last month, you should plan never got there.  Messages to kashless listings were delivered fine.  We will let you know when it is fixed.

In college, I took a course on consumer patterns. People with PHDs have applied their nimble brains to figuring out how, what, and why we buy. They've mostly answered the first two questions, but no one knows exactly why we buy all the stuff we buy.

As for the "how" of shopping, we all know from experience that there are people who shop for the object and people who shop for the experience.

But among those who like to shop, there are three sub-categories:

Group 1: People who like to shop in tidy, linear places (think Gap)

Group 2: People who like the "treasure hunt" of thrift shopping

Group 3: People who are forced to shop thriftily but would rather not

Let's assume that most Kashless users fall into group 2. Don't deny it - I've seen the server logs. I know that you don't use the search function. You're browsing through page after page of listings looking for something cool.

One of the UK's top resale shops, Oxfam, tried to organize its jumble of used goodies into the linear layout used in first-run shops like Gap or Macy's. They found that everyone hated it and stopped shopping there. Those of us in Group 2 don't want you to hand us anything. We want to find it. We're looking for a little bit of ourselves, lost in the confusing listings or the bizarrely organized piles.

So now we know how we buy. We also know what we're buying - unique, used, secondhand items that have some history.

Is this also why we buy? Are we shopping around for a little bit of identity? Are we thrifting out way to a clearer sense of self?

I think so. My secondhand, thrift-store things say a lot more about me than my department store purchases. This is what good thrifting is all about: being yourself, being sustainable, and having fun.

I am sure everyone but the comatose have noticed that we are playing with the placement of ads on the site during the last couple of weeks.   We hate pushy ads as much as the next guy.  We hate cluttered design.  We hate paying for something (with our attention, our money, or anything else) that doesn’t provide a GREAT value.  A great site should give you more than you give it.  A great site will strike the right balance between clean design, revenue and features.  As we have written before, the only truly sustainable businesses are ones that can pay their bills by providing products and services that people value.  So here we are trying to figure out with our members the right balance to strike which will enable us to grow and continue to provide great service to the community.   The ad trials we have been running (different placements, different sizes, etc.) are one way to keep the cost in $ down to every member.

Here are a couple of guiding principles helping guide us here

- Keep a small, lean team.  Small expense means small revenue required.

- Don’t spend marketing money like a drunken sailor (or like most tech start-ups)

- Clean, usable design

- Don’t depend only on advertising (means there will be less of it)

- Keep most things free, price as low as possible only for really valuable things (sorta like Craig’s list)

- Allow Kashless to expand everywhere it makes sense, reach as many people as possible.

In part based on these guidelines, here are a couple of things we have decided to NOT DO.

- Have more than three ads units on a page

- Have ads interlaced with the item listings (That REALLY offends me on other sites)

- Require a sign-on to search or browse listings. 

Thanks for following our progress.  We will keep at it.  Comments welcome. 

Today in the development meeting at Kashless.org we were discussion our \TALK feature.  Basically the user support forums.  A skinned implementation of Vanilla forums.  When initially setting up the site I added discussion forums because everyone else had them. Also they seemed a good way to do customer support, answer FAQ questions and allow your community to interact with each other.  I installed and maintained them myself.  But then we installed TenderApp for customer support ticketing.  TenderApp is private labeled as well, but has the advantage of single sign-on and integration into our development ticketing process to fix bugs.  So \Talk languished without our attention and requiring a separate log-on.  Last week there were a couple posts there and two e-mails directly to me asking “hey are you guys here?” 

There was a dull pain growing in the back of my head.  “Is a half implemented, unsupported feature better than no feature at all?”  “What is the real goal of having discussions forums?” “Is the site better with or without them?”   The feature was poorly integrated into the site without clear goals and lacking company support.  Since we implemented Vanilla we also integrated FaceBook and Twitter which provide some of the community building aspects we had hoped to get through the forums.  It was clear to me that in the rush to check the feature box we had half assed it.  That led to a couple decision points

#1:  Keep current feature implementation? yes/no

#2:  Upgrade current discussion boards for cleaner technical integration? yes/no

#3:  Allocate Customer Service resources to make the discussion boards active and engaging?  yes/no

#4:  Is \TALK fulfilling our customer service goals?  yes/no

#5:  Is \TALK fulfilling our community building member to member goals?  yes/no

At Kashless, we like to have pride in everything on the site and be providing incremental member value with each thing we do, so the answers (after lots of spirited discussion) were:

#1:  NO, remove \TALK from site

#2:  NO, Vanilla doesn’t allow for single sign-on with our application, has a different look and feel and would require duplication of effort now being devoted to TenderAPP, so upgrading would not achieve any benefit.

#3:  NO, customer service resources are better spend fully supporting TenderApp for customer service.

#4:  NO, customer service is being well delivered through TenderApp.

#5: NO, community building goals are being pursued through Twitter, FaceBook and other applications at this time.  At some point in the future if we can design a well integrated set of features for member to member community building as part of Kashless.org, think about adding it then.

I would rather focus on great integration and support for features that provide clear member value than to simply have a box checked on a feature list somewhere.  In this case, taking the discussion boards out is best.

Jordan, our new designer is really sprucing things up!  And now with Gravatar support ya know!

OK, so Friday I posted a Lexmark X 7170 printer on Kashless for free.  The multi-function printer had ink, cables, manual, software, worked and was only 3 years old.  I posted to Kashless.org and the system re-posted to Craig’s list, FreeCycle Seattle, my Twitter feed (which reposted to FaceBook) and e-mailed a couple people. 

Within 10 minutes I had received 10 messages wanting the printer.  By Sunday I had received over 50.  So now my problem was cue management and who to give it to.  All of these offers came to me in e-mail.  Friday afternoon Jennifer offered the printer to a local representative of the Red Cross who was one of the first 10 to respond.  So we were holding the printer for him.  So all the other 49 people we put on hold, telling many of them that it was already gone.  The Red Cross guy didn’t respond by Monday at noon, so we went through the list again.  We requested that anyone who wanted the printer should respond through the Kashless.org link.  20 of the 50 did try the links.  Unfortunately (or fortunately since we are still in Alpha) this process uncovered some bugs which caused user frustration.  These bugs are all fixed now. 

Of the Kashless responses received, Jennifer sorted them and sent e-mails to the top 5 saying the printer needed to be picked up between 4-6.  The first responder was a Seattle guy running an independent record label and needing a scanner/fax/printer for his new start-up business.  He was promptly at the office at 4:00.  We happily turned over the printer. 

The Kashless Krew learned alot from this process, fixed alot of bugs and identified a couple areas for feature improvement.  Thanks to everyone who participated, it is really helping us improve Kashless for everyone!

Got a wonderful surprise this morning when I got into the office and checked the server logs from yesterday.  Our traffic doubled!  Over a thousand of you went to the site yesterday, the vast majority for the first time. 

To be sure the Seattle Times article on the front page of the business section was a big part of it.  Analytics also tell us that most people come directly to the site by typing kashless.org into the browser while Twitter and DGC remain the top referrers.  An interesting note on keywords is that the third most common key word that gets users to our site is “free pews”.

The Kashless Krew continues to crank out the features and respond to your feedback.  We had a mini-release last night including stuff like:

- Separate account “preferences” and “Activity” pages. The “my account” page was getting a bit long and busy.

- Fixed a bug in account funding that showed incomplete paypal transfers as funds added to your account (I Wish!)

- You can now add multiple profile credentials to your account preferences page including your FreeCycle email address, Craig’s list, and Twitter.  More coming soon!  These will default to your post creation when posting a new item

- Saved searches in navigation now estimate the number of results.  Handy eh?  Still looking for that skull highball glass…

- improved post an item workflow, including the ability to e-mail notify people directly and post pictures from KL directly to CL.

- added our slogans “Because you’re broke…” and “Set your stuff FREE!”  thanks !

- more frequent SMS notifications.

- you can now get to the service at either kashless.com OR kashless.org (finally :)

- you can now join FreeCycle directly from Kashless.org (still just Seattle).

More to come!

By now I am sure you have noticed that we have changed the log-on for the site from a “user name” to an “Email Address”. 

We have received a couple queries so thought it would be a good idea to explain ourselves a little.

The issue of Trust and transparency on-line is very important to us here at Kashless.org.  Especially when you are trying to consummate a transaction with someone who could potentially be coming to your home or office.  Hidden emails like SALE123459@classified.com or random user names like BlueKitty69 tend to work against the goals of trust and transparency.  Anything that causes friction in making a connection is a bad thing.  Hidden emails and unreal user names cause friction.  They are also hard to remember.  They are a barrier to getting to know who you are dealing with and getting comfortable with dealing with them. 

We want you to know that there are real people behind every user at Kashless.org.  The more you know about someone that you are potentially giving or getting to or from, the less friction there is in the market.  That is why we require a REAL Email address.  That is also why we did away with user names.  That is also why we encourage you to fill out a complete account profile, sharing as much information about yourself as you are comfortable with. 

Enjoy and comments always welcome!

The Krew has been busy this past week and a half.  We love that Ruby and Agile development lets us rapidly respond to user requirements and provide continuous updates.  Alpha 2 is all about posting your own gently used items for giving through Kashless and other markets. 2.0 supported Kashless and Seattle FreeCycle.  2.1 adds:

- Posting to all Washington Craig’s list Free categories.

- Search highlighting

- Improved account management pages

- Bug fixes that delayed saved searches being sent. You now get immediate SMS messages when we find a match!

Oh, and Martin is multi tasking so much, he must take conference calls while eating Indian food.

and Martin is even installing Jen’s new video card to support two monitors (but John had to actually get it to work)

Thanks the hundreds of votes you all gave us in the Kashless tagline survey.  And for the additional suggestions too!  And the winner is……

Actually we picked two.  One for givers and one for takers.  We will mostly us the one for takers in general marketing because everyone wants free stuff! 

The Envelope says:

Kashless.org, Because you’re broke…

Kashess.org, Set your Stuff FREE!

Yea, I can see the tee-shirts and stickers now!

A couple of people were experiencing long delays getting the e-mail confirmation when setting up a new account.  Or the e-mail was ending up in spam or being rejected by spam programs (especially Barracuda and Spam Assassin).   Mea Culpa, it was a bug on our side and it has been fixed.  We sent everyone who tried to set up an account in the last week an e-mail saying to come back and request the system resend your password. 

Keep the feedback coming, that is how we are making Kashless better!

We have implemented a 0.5 version of this feature.  Under certain conditions, you will be able to claim a tax deduction for Recycling stuff through Kashless.  Check out the FAQ on how to now. 

Last Friday I wanted to check out the new features on Kashless (FreeCycle & Twitter) so I posted a coffee/espresso maker to give away.

Within 5 minutes I was able to give my coffee maker away to a friend…

So how did it work?  I posted to Kashless and gave Kashless my information to post to my Twitter.  I have my Twitter setup to automatically post to Facebook.  My girlfriend on Facebook saw the post and immediately responded that she wanted it.  Now how cool is that?  Within 5 minutes I was able to give something to a friend instead of putting it in a landfill. 

Last night we pushed to production the next major feature set enabling
you to post your own stuff to give away. Highlights include, 

1.  New "Give Away" link to post your extra stuff.

2.  The Kashless system will now automatically repost to FreeCycle and Twitter.

3.  The password has been removed so anyone can browse!

4.  Improved offer management.

5.  A few A3 related upgrades (donuts for those of you who find them).

A special shout out to those of you who helped with our last user survey,
you probably notice changes on the site that reflect the feedback. At Kashless.org, the community makes the site.
As we get ready to launch in the wild, we would like your help choosing a tagline that communicates
to the world what Kashless.org is all about. We have been brainstorming for the last three months,
and our finalists have been put in a quick 20 second ballot. Click HERE to place your votes, or fill it out below.

As always e-mail at support@kashless.org or see you on the site!

Thanks!

Martin and the Krew

Lots of people are figuring out that you can recycle books. You can get even that new release for free on a trading site. And books on your shelf are a potential asset in economic hard times.  It looks from the Compete.com data that Goodreads.com, PaperbackSwap.com and Librarything.com are winning and growing fast while Shelfari, Bookins, Bookmooch, Bookcrossing, Allconsuming.net (early leader) and others languish.  Books are also a growing category for some of the generalized sites like SwapTree which seems to be kicking SwapThing’s ass. 

I need to integrate some into Kashless.  Which are your favorites?