Askablogr: First 24 Hours

So we "officially" opened up the alpha version of Askablogr to the public on Friday, and as with any new product release there were some high points and some low points. The high point was our first "outside" signup by Katana (thanks, Katana), and the low was a series of bugs that Katana ran into trying to get the widget set up and answer her first question (special shout-out to Natalie, a.k.a. Nanook9828, for that first question).

We also marked our first "where did they come from?" signup and install by Roger (thanks, Roger). Katana found us through a comment on her blog, but I don't know how Roger heard about us (I asked him a question via his Askablogr widget but either we have a bug or he hasn't responded yet).

Finally, I'm not 100% sure but it also looks like we got our first spam signup (it's a little hard to tell b/c they didn't include a link to their site, but Unlimited Success World Wide Website sounds a little commercial to me).

My biggest worry right now is that our blogger experience isn't as slick or polished as it needs to be. Signups and installs seem to be going OK, but the post insert process seems a little fragile, and the formatting of the inserted posts needs some work. If bloggers - the main user group for Askablogr - are going to keep this widget and feature it on their sites, we're going to have to make the experience of answering questions easier, better, more fun and better looking (and we need to improve it before we move on to other features on the wish list, like answer feedback scores, the blogger leaderboard, even Wordpress integration).

All in all, though, it's been incredibly satisfying to get this app that was just an idea in my head out in to the world for people to play with, even in its current clunky and fugly form. Thanks to everyone who's helped out in ways large and small, and a huge shout-out to Craig, our architect, developer, tester and troubleshooter.