There are a number of things we are working on that we believe will help greatly in attracting the right kind of people to our platform so that Snapzu may one day go from the "small town" it is, to a mecca for great communities and the people and content within them. We expect to launch these functions in the coming months, and when we do, we plan on focusing on nothing else but growth. As for what our members can do to help spread the word now, it looks like gladsdotter has put up a great list already.

Those of you curious to know a little more on what's coming, here is a short list:

1. Expansion of tribes to allow chief & moderators to add any snaps to their community by "mirroring it" to their tribe.
2. Each snap will have a global comments area (like it is now), and a dedicated tribe specific comments area for a single community/tribe to be able to discuss content. Mirroring a snap into your tribe allows for both joining the global comments area and the creation of a dedicated comments area.
3. Tribe chiefs and moderators will be able to manipulate the title, intro and cover image of any snap mirrored into their tribe. This does not change the original content posted, but it helps for communities to properly curate and customize mirrored content so it fits within their tribe rules and vision (currently we plan this only for listing content, so changes should be minimal, ie. cleaning up title, intro, etc).
4. Emailer will be expanded to be much more helpful, transactional emails such as receiving a new PM, or getting a reply on your post will be sent out to help our members feel more connected to their communities and people they follow.
5. The completion of the referral program payment system and premium perks/features so that members that wish to help can get premium status and help us with hosting, development and the expansion of the platform. We are a small group of developers with full time jobs, we dream of some day working on Snapzu full time. There is so much more to do, so many more ideas that are shelved until we can have the time and funds to make those ideas a reality!
6. We have recently made updates to the referral program to help promote our platform to bloggers that have significant readership and would like to add a community to their blog. You can read more all of this here.

Over the past few years the use of ad blockers has risen significantly, and it's hurting the revenue stream of not only the big content producers out there but small "mom and pop" blog operations as well. We see this as an amazing opportunity to do two things. First, we want to offer bloggers / content creators and their readership a place they can setup and run a community so that they can expand their offering beyond the content they create and have a place to call home. And 2nd, which we feel is even more important... create a new revenue stream to enable them to leave the old advertising model behind as we can all see that it's a part of an old and dying system.

We feel that by doing these two things, and doing them well, everyone wins. The bloggers/content creators get a shiny new community that they can manage and grow, as well as a fresh revenue stream that is unaffected by the raise of ad blockers. Their users get more bang for their buck and quickly jump in and engage with Snapzu by joining other communities in addition to the community they joined initially. We receive the other 50% of any revenue generate...

There are a number of things we are working on that we believe will help greatly in attracting the right kind of people to our platform so that Snapzu may one day go from the "small town" it is, to a mecca for great communities and the people and content within them. We expect to launch these functions in the coming months, and when we do, we plan on focusing on nothing else but growth. As for what our members can do to help spread the word now, it looks like gladsdotter has put up a great list already.

Those of you curious to know a little more on what's coming, here is a short list:

1. Expansion of tribes to allow chief & moderators to add any snaps to their community by "mirroring it" to their tribe.
2. Each snap will have a global comments area (like it is now), and a dedicated tribe specific comments area for a single community/tribe to be able to discuss content. Mirroring a snap into your tribe allows for both joining the global comments area and the creation of a dedicated comments area.
3. Tribe chiefs and moderators will be able to manipulate the title, intro and cover image of any snap mirrored into their tribe. This does not change the original content posted, but it helps for communities to properly curate and customize mirrored content so it fits within their tribe rules and vision (currently we plan this only for listing content, so changes should be minimal, ie. cleaning up title, intro, etc).
4. Emailer will be expanded to be much more helpful, transactional emails such as receiving a new PM, or getting a reply on your post will be sent out to help our members feel more connected to their communities and people they follow.
5. The completion of the referral program payment system and premium perks/features so that members that wish to help can get premium status and help us with hosting, development and the expansion of the platform. We are a small group of developers with full time jobs, we dream of some day working on Snapzu full time. There is so much more to do, so many more ideas that are shelved until we can have the time and funds to make those ideas a reality!
6. We have recently made updates to the referral program to help promote our platform to bloggers that have significant readership and would like to add a community to their blog. You can read more all of this here.

Over the past few years the use of ad blockers has risen significantly, and it's hurting the revenue stream of not only the big content producers out there but small "mom and pop" blog operations as well. We see this as an amazing opportunity to do two things. First, we want to offer bloggers / content creators and their readership a place they can setup and run a community so that they can expand their offering beyond the content they create and have a place to call home. And 2nd, which we feel is even more important... create a new revenue stream to enable them to leave the old advertising model behind as we can all see that it's a part of an old and dying system.

We feel that by doing these two things, and doing them well, everyone wins. The bloggers/content creators get a shiny new community that they can manage and grow, as well as a fresh revenue stream that is unaffected by the raise of ad blockers. Their users get more bang for their buck and quickly jump in and engage with Snapzu by joining other communities in addition to the community they joined initially. We receive the other 50% of any revenue generated which will go towards hosting, expansion and development of the platform even further. And everyone wins because Snapzu will be growing into the very platform we dreamed of creating since the first line of code was written.

I will be posting an in depth blog post about the recent mobile update and within that post I will go further into what is coming in the near future. Until then, I hope the short list of things above is helpful for those curious to know what we are working on. Thanks!

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Ctrl+f "API". Nope? Ok, I'll talk about it.

Snapzu needs to go mobile. This is going to sound like some business man at a tech conference but mobile is the future of social media. I don't think that it is the future of all web-based technology, but I think recent times have shown how important a web platform is. And I'm not talking about mobile sites, though that is good as well. I am talking about full-fledged community-created and driven apps.

Let's look at the current state of social media. First, we have multiple networks that are COMPLETELY app based. One might think that not having a website would hurt your social media platform, but the android and ios markets are so ridiculously large that its easy. Instagram, snapchat, vine. All thriving. In fact, I can't remember the last time I heard somebody say that they were going to post something to Facebook. They talk about posting their pictures to "insta" or videos to their snapchat stories. Phones have the monopoly on how socially minded people communicate.

Now let's look at the bigger sites. Facebook. Twitter. Tumblr. Reddit. All sites that people spend most of the time browsing on their apps. The only times I'll use the web versions personally are when I happen to be linked to the site from something else. The exception is Reddit, where about 1/3 of my time is spent on the web because a lot of the content I use there (programming subs, videos) just aren't always possible to enjoy on the phone.

And compare Reddit and Snapzu, Snapzu even has more potential as an app. Personally, I think that the site would work better, from an organization standpoint. Image hosting is simpler, tribes and snaps make it easier to jump around the site to your interests (rather than having to travel to subreddits), and the feed makes it easier to relax and enjoy a stream of content. Even the snap posting system, which is more complex than Reddit's system, doesn't include anything that wouldn't easily translate to an mobile app UI.

I agree with drunkenninja with his post. We need to attract the right people to the site, and I think the technologies that are being talked about would be helpful. However, I think a public API should be a high priority if we want these right kinds of people. It would open ourselves up to a market of mobile users as well as technologically minded people who would want to use the API to create.

Snapzu isn't dead its just pining for the Fjords