We've heard from a few of you that our player database didn't include some of the rookies and prospects that you wanted to write about. You've been unable to categorize your articles about Jered Weaver, Lastings Milledge, Jason Bartlett, etc. Well, problem solved. Definitely let us know if we're still missing any active players, but the rosters should be updating regularly now.
In all of our communication with you, our early customers, we've been emphasizing the importance of feedback. In your invitation, we explained that you were targeted as an initial user not just because we thought your contributions would be interesting and readable, but also because we hoped your feedback would be great. This underscores our fundamental product strategy: it's very hard to build exactly what you want if we don't build exactly what you ask for. We launched the alpha version of this site with the minimum set of features we thought were necessary to test whether a platform like this would work for our audience. Now, a few weeks later, we feel pretty good about our basic assumptions, and we're ready to start adding features in-line with what you're asking for. Let me give you a few recent examples of how we have used your feedback to improve Yardbarker: 6/8/06 Feedback from BuntCake: "woah, go to oakland's page and click on milton bradley's player page... I'm pretty sure that's not him." While we knew there were some player photo mismatches, feedback like this helped us realize that if we wanted to be taken seriously, we had to fix these bugs right away. It took some late nights and negotiation with our data provider, but we fixed it quickly. 6/9/06 Feedback from GeneralZod: "when the main pages opens up should the default setting be to 'most recent' vs 'most popular'?" We've done a lot of work tweaking the "most popular" sort so that it displays articles with the perfect balance of timeliness and popularity. When there are thousands of writers on Yardbarker we think this is going to be far more useful than "most recent." However, we also realize that until we get to that point, a lot of people just like seeing what's new. We're working on a happy medium solution to this problem now. 6/14/06 Feedback from Curtisology101: "Add Jason Bartlett to the Twins roster and start a file on him. He started on the damn roster last season so he should definitely have been on the site in the first place!" We get our player data from a company that supposedly maintains up-to-date rosters, but many of you have pointed out holes in current rosters. You also want the ability to write about minor leaguers. Look for a solution soon. 6/16/06 Feedback from Daniel: "Maybe I am overlooking it....but I do not think I am. I think it would be a good feature to give everyone a private message box so if we so choose we can private message each other. That would be a great feature I think." This feedback could not have come at a better time. We've heard similar things from other users and we've started to prioritize developing an internal inbox for private messages as well as updates about new content. This feedback from Daniel helped seal the deal -- we're working on this feature for the next version of the product. 6/17/06 Feedback from TheGURU: "I have written two articles.. one got a 10, one got an 8... and my average is 8.5 I'm no mathematician but... ;-)" A couple people pointed out that our scoring system was buggy. It's being fixed. Feedback is useful for bug fixes and for feature ideas. We think ultimately by listening, learning, and iterating, we'll have worked with you to create the perfect place to hang out online and talk about sports. Keep the feedback coming, and let's hear your comments on this post! The Yardbarker Team
Today you should notice that the player pages on Yardbarker have photos of the players. This is a small, almost ceremonial step in the direction of making Yardbarker just as useful for researching sports topics as it is for writing about them. We don't want you to have to go off to another site to dig for the facts that help you write your posts and put other users' articles in context. The next version of the site will include more robust, near-realtime stats as well, and each version after that will give you more and more tools for slicing and dicing player stats, viewing game results, team schedules, league standings, and more. Through your feedback, you have helped us prioritize this focus on stats. Other new changes include a new-and-improved default sort by "Most Popular" on most of the pages, and a shorter, more self-explanatory list of topics. We think the site is getting close to being ready for more users. We're planning to invite a couple hundred hardcore fantasy baseball gamers in the next few days. Thanks for all your feedback, and as always, keep it coming! Jack, Jeff, Mark, and Pete The Yardbarker Team
Hello Yardbarker Founders! That's right -- you're a founder. You were one of the first users in the doors because we identified you as someone who could help us make Yardbarker into something great. The site you are using now is obviously very simple, but we have a long list of features that we're planning to implement over the next few months. Things like a more robust stats section for each player and team; better formatting of articles (and spelchek); better rating and filtering tools; and more flexibility in customizing your profile page. Your feedback is helping us prioritize this list. Keep it coming! For now, you may notice a few changes to the site. We have improved the WRITE AN ARTICLE workflow so that it should produce better categorization results, and be much easier to use. We've also made user photos expandable, and fixed a few pesky bugs. We're getting ready to open the doors to the next batch of users, so the site should start filling up with content over the next month or so. We want it to be useful for you as soon as possible. In the meantime, and as always, tell us what you think! Jack, Jeff, Mark, and Pete
Welcome to the first few of you through the doors. We've invited just a handful of close friends at this point, to get a look at what the Yardbarker team has been up to for the past few months. We know there are bugs -- we're hoping you can help us find even more. Use the feedback button in the top right for bug reports, feature requests, or other ideas. We already have one significant bug that you've probably come across -- when you click on MY DASHBOARD in the top navigation bar, you may see an Application Error notice, which obviously shouldn't be there. The dashboard still works -- you're just missing some text which tells you how to use it. The gist of that test is this: the Dashboard is your personalized view of the content on Yardbarker. You can add players, teams, topics, or authors to the Dashboard by clicking "Add To Favorites" when you're on a player/team/topic/author page. Thanks! Jack, Jeff, Mark, and Pete
