General changes:

• Profile Background: Over the last little while, we've gotten a lot of feedback about how much real estate the profile background was taking up (most noticeable on smaller resolutions and screens), especially when browsing posted content. When viewing posts, the user profile background is now mostly hidden, but is always accessible with a quick scroll up the page (on desktops). The extra space allows pages to load with much more focus on the content that is being shared, along with the extra things that the community thrives on, such as the related links and discussion areas.

• Direct linking: There is now a toggle in your settings area where you can select whether clicking on a post title (from various areas such as Front page, My Snaps, Tribes, and Feed) will lead directly to the external link (if it's a link snap), or to the snap itself. Note: All existing accounts keep their current settings until they are toggled manually. We hope that those who choose to be linked directly will still take time to visit the snap itself to contribute any related links or any comments they might want to share.

Front Page:

• Text Posts: Text posts will now appear on the front page list to give them the well deserved exposure. This also includes category front page lists. The goal is to get people more engaged in discussions in their favorite tribes.

• Post numbering: All posts are now numbered to help in general browsing of content, especially useful in the later pages.

• Front Page List: The front page list got a visual update with more focus on the comments and tribes to help them better stand out. The list is also now the default display style for all new users that land on the index page (http://snapzu.com). We feel that while the grid style is great for exploring content, it can be a bit overwhelming for new users that are first introduced to the site and may be confusing for them to understand what exactly Snapzu does. Your selection of what format you last used (list or grid) is remembered for your convenience while you are logged in.

Viewing Snaps:

• Voting: The primary vote functionality has been relocated to the left to stay consistent with text posts (both now having voting in the same area). This update now also supports voting when being viewed on tablets and mobile devices, as it was previously not possible.

• Cover Image: The cover image was taking up too much vertical real estate and was made significantly smaller to make space for more important community features like related links and even more importantly, the comments area. The social aspects of the community are now better accessible and get more exposure which may increase social interactions among the community. Users are still encouraged to provide large and high quality images as they will still be used on the Front Page grid.

• Comments: The comments area had some minor graphical changes to make it more streamlined. Voting arrows were made to be not so “in-your-face”, and the arrows and score is now shown on mouse over (or tap on touch screen devices). User avatars were also made a tad smaller.

• Pin button: The pin button was moved into a more accessible location, just above the content and close to the voting arrows.

• Edit button: The edit button (for OPs) also shares the same area as voting and pins. We noticed some of our members had a difficult time locating the button in its previous location.

Tribes:

• List: The post listing had some minor graphical changes to be more consistent with other similar listing areas. Comments were specifically made to stand out more due to the newly available option of being linked directly to content.

The aforementioned changes were specifically designed and implemented to help promote social activity among the community now that certain parts are much more accessible. Please let us know what you think of the changes in the comments!

Upcoming changes:

We have a number of additional upgrades planned over the upcoming weeks that will further improve existing social features. These include:

• Snaps Overview: The Snaps section will be expanded to include all your posts, including text posts. The Manage Snaps and Snap Overview area will be conjoined into one page with additional statistics, sorting and filtering options designed to make it easier to track and manage your content.

• Pinups: After various feedback, we will be changing the “pin” format into a “save” format. This will remove any confusion regarding what a pin actually is (many people understood it as some kind of Pinterest cross platform feature). Along with terminology changes, there will be considerable layout and usability changes (new filters, search and sorting) to make it an easier process to organize, save and manage posts. We also have plans to make Text Posts save-able, and to make your Snapzine into a list format for much better accessibility with the infinity scroll converted into the more effective pagination option.

• Snap Submission: The green “Submit” button will receive extended functionality to quickly and easily allow a user to pre-identify what kind of content they want to post so that we can better prepare the submission form to automate as much of the process as possible. We feel that submitting links and videos is currently a non-issue, but submitting images and other more complex items is more complicated than it should be so we will work on streamlining the process as much as possible.

That's about it, we hope you enjoy the changes. Thanks for your time and happy snapping!

PS: Congrats to our 10,000th member, user darkone!