Grouvee

Twitter Integration

We’ve added some pretty cool Twitter integration to Grouvee in the last few days.

You can now sign up/sign in to Grouvee using your Twitter account if you so desire. If you already have an existing account, head over to your profile and click the button that says Connect Twitter. If you don’t have a Grouvee account, you can now easily sign up for an account using your Twitter credentials.

If you use Grouvee status updates, you’ll now see there’s a new checkbox underneath the status box. If you check the Post to Twitter box, Grouvee will tweet out your status for you!

People have been asking for more Twitter integration, so we built it for you! Hopefully you enjoy. Feedback is always welcome.

-Pete

Activity Feed Change

We made a big change to the Activity Feed you see on the front page when you’re signed into Grouvee today. Before, if you didn’t have any friends on the site, there would just be a little message that said “you don’t have friends, add them.” That’s not really what Grouvee is about. We want you to see what other gamers have similar interests to you, and discover other games you might enjoy through them.

Today, we changed the front page feed to let you see activity based on games that are on your shelves. If you add Portal 2 to your shelf, then you’re going to see activities for Portal 2 in your Games feed. This way you can see what other people think about Portal 2, and maybe you’ll click through somebody’s profile and shelves and discover some other cool games that you didn’t even know about. That’s the hope anyway.

If you do have friends on Grouvee, you’re still going to see the same feed you’re used to seeing, but you’ll have the option to see activities based on your games simply by clicking on the Games link underneath Recent Activity on the front page.

We hope this change is for the better. We think it makes people feel a little more connected to what’s going on in Grouvee. As always, leave us feedback using the feedback button the right side of ever page, or email me, peter@grouvee.com

-Pete-

Grouvee Giveaway!!

We’re giving away 2 copies of The Cave on Steam because we hit 10,000 ratings a few days ago. 

Go to http://bit.ly/VcFCcb to win!

Video game start and finish dates in today’s updates

A lot of people have been asking for this feature, and it’s finally here! You can now add start and finish dates for games on Grouvee. Simply go to your My Games page, or an individual game’s page, and click on the Add Dates links to start logging your dates today.

We added a couple of other little things along with the dates update. You can now log your hours played for a game in the same place you can log the dates. Once we start getting a decent amount of data, we’ll start displaying stats on a game’s page for how long you can expect a game to take you to complete.

You might have noticed that your shelf pages, and the /games/ pages load a lot faster now. I made some performance tweaks that hopefully will cut down on some of the load times for those pages.

As always, feel free to leave us feedback using the feedback button on the side of every page, or email me, peter@grouvee.com, with questions/comments/life stories and whatnot.

-Pete

Changes to Grouvee 12/30/2012

Grouvee got a little bit of a facelift today. I’ve tried to make adding games to shelves easier by creating a shelf toolbar instead of the button dropdown. There are now 5 buttons on the toolbar, four for the main shelves, Played, Playing, Wish List and Backlog, and one for all of your custom shelves.

The /games/ and search pages have gotten a nice redesign as well. The information has been moved around so it’s easier to see, and the sorting and filter options are much nicer with a cool form on the right side of the page.

Individual games pages have gotten a little bit of a redesign too. I think they’re more organized, and it’s easier to rate games, write reviews, or update your status with the new layout.

If the site looks a little funny, do a refresh on the page, or clear the cache out on your browser. We don’t have proper versioning of our style sheets and javascript files yet, so you need to make sure your browser pulls the latest files.

As always, if you have any comments or issues, use the feedback widget that shows up on the right side of every page, or email me at peter@grouvee.com.

Status Updates are Live!!

We’ve added the ability to post status updates for a game today. Let’s say you’re playing Far Cry 3, and something super awesome happens. You don’t really want to write a full review of the game, but you want to make note of the event or achievement and share it with your friends. All you need to do is go to a game page, click inside the Post a Status Update box, and type away! Your friends and followers will see your post in their Friend Activity Feed the next time they log in.

Now let’s say you’re playing a long, old-school JRPG, like Final Fantasy 6, and you want a place that you can keep track of what you did last, as well as what you need to do next when you come back to the game. You want to post a status update about the game, but you don’t really want all your friends, or the random people of the Internet to see your updates. All you need to do is check the Private box when you post the status, and no one but you will be able to see your update! This way you can keep private thoughts and notes on the game that are just for you.

We hope this a useful feature that you’ll enjoy, and if you have any issues, or want to see this, or any other feature on the site improved, feel free to email support@grouvee.com, or leave feedback with our uservoice widget that shows up on the side of every page. As always, thanks for using Grouvee!

Minor update to Grouvee

I just added the ability to delete and edit shelves. If you created a shelf by accident and want to get rid of it, now you can. Simply click on the “My Games” link, and then click on the “Edit Shelves” link underneath your shelf list. There you should be able to delete and edit shelves. If you have an issue with it, try clearing your browser cache first. If that doesn’t fix your problem, go ahead and click the Feedback button that’s on the side of every page on Grouvee and file a bug.

You can also now change your password without having to go through the reset process. Go to your profile page, and click on the “Edit Profile” button. From there, click on the “Change Password” link, and follow the instructions.

Thanks for using Grouvee!

Facebook Registration and Login now available!

I just added the ability to register and login to Grouvee using your Facebook account tonight. If you’ve already got a Grouvee account, simply login to your existing account, go to your profile page, and click on the Connect Facebook button. This will allow you to use your Facebook account to login from now on if you don’t want to worry about remembering yet another password. If you don’t already have an account, it’s real easy to register with one click using your Facebook account now! Grouvee will never, ever post anything to your timeline, or send messages, or really do anything on Facebook without asking you explicitly first. I added this as a convenience feature if you hate remembering a million passwords on the Interwebs.

If you’re feeling really ambitious, there’s a little undocumented feature that will let you invite your Facebook friends to Grouvee. Simply point your browser to https://www.grouvee.com/friends/invite/facebook and you’ll be directed to a dialog to let your friends on Facebook know about Grouvee. It’s not really 100% ready for production, but it at least will let you pick out which friends you want to send a message to about the site to help spread the word. I still have some work to do that would automatically setup friendships and whatnot. But if you’re feeling generous, and want to spread the word about Grouvee, go ahead and use the feature to let your friends know!

Thanks to everyone who has signed up so far. The response to the site has been amazing, and I’m really happy with how many people have signed up, and left me feedback. If you ever have any comments or concerns, feel free to send me an email at peter at grouvee.com, or tweet me at @petercorsaro.

Profile Pages Revamped

Our profile pages got a new look today. Instead of having the cumbersome tabs that used to be there, there’s a nice clean page with all of a user’s content visible and easily accessed.

Take a look at an example here!

Most Popular Video Games

We’ve been fortunate to have a decent number of early users who have put in over 1,300 ratings and reviews in the first couple of weeks. That’s way more than I expected we would get so quickly. So thanks all of you early adopters! Trying to figure out what games are the most “popular” on Grouvee was going to be difficult based on the data… at least I thought it was.

I want to have the /games/ page show an interesting list of games when you first get to it instead of just sorting alphabetically or by release date or something boring. My initial thought was that I was going to have to do something complicated based on the average rating, number of people who have the game on their shelves, number of ratings, etc, but I ended up not doing any of that. When you first get to the /games/ page, it now sorts by the number of ratings a game has, which I think is a pretty good measure of what’s most popular on Grouvee. If you look at the list, you’ll see that the really simple algorithm works pretty well right now. Skyrim, Portal 2, Borderlands, Portal, and Batman: Arkham Asylum are the most rated games on Grouvee right now, which makes complete sense to me. They’re 5 of the biggest games that have been released in the last 3 - 5 years, and that’s what people have played.

Figuring out the “top rated” games is going to be a little more complicated. I probably will have to do something based on number of ratings, average rating, etc, but for now I’m happy with figuring out a simple way to show you the most “popular” games on the site.