How Propeller Should Be

24th July 2008

*To view the pictures in their true size please click on them.

*Please note that all news items posted on the proposed design are fictional and were made for a few laughs.

Personally, I think that the new design for the Propeller site was made by those behind it to make it a more effective social medium for its users. When I came to the site, I was excited to try how the new structure worked and what improvements were made. I found it a little confusing at first, but figured that though it does require a little getting used to, almost all the past features were there.

The current rating system still does not make sense to me. I feel that limiting the ranking to 10 just puts the story in a vague position making it harder to measure which news are preferred by more compared to others that make it to the front page.

I am yet to find the real time activity indicators that were present before. I am crossing my fingers that they are still there. The messaging features and the groups feature were a little leaning towards making it more social I guess, but the loss of focus on news stories may prove to be a downfall for the new scheme.

I have also seen the introductory video to the site. Though it promises to keep the old spirit of interaction that exists in there, I cannot help but frown at how commenting is sugar quoted as “conversations”, making it sound like a bigger deal that it actually is.

Honestly, I will still be a Propeller, fan. The change, however, makes the whole experience more complicated for me. Yesterday, I found myself switching and visiting Digg once again for my share of news. if things don’t improve in the coming days, I fell I will find myself doing that more and more.

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This entry was posted on Thursday, July 24th, 2008 at 5:46 am and is filed under Car Parts: Opinions. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

1 On July 24th, 2008, Tom Drapeau said:

Great design! And great feedback on Propeller. We taking in feedback from all over, including blogs such as this. To mainline your comments, go to:

http://www.propeller.com/feedback

A few points of clarification:
-We are ironing things out with the ranking scale. Stories should need to be very good to hit the homepage, but maybe we need to make them “work harder” to get there, thus creating some diversity in the numbers on the homepage.

-Conversations are like forum posts for the groups you are in. They aren’t comments, as comments are attached to stories. Conversations can be about anything a group member wants – they don’t have to be about today’s news. Its still not that big of a deal , just pointing out the difference.

Thanks for the analysis, your feedback is helping us to make Propeller better!

2 On July 25th, 2008, Automotive Dealership Marketing said:

Normally it is yes! even i am one of those wondering looking at their new structure..but i liked it..

3 On July 25th, 2008, Chris said:

Tom,

Thanks for the clarifications. Change is always approached with aversion and negativity, so I am pretty positive that this phase will just pass. The thing though is that you learn from it. Many of the things you guys will receive can be received like constructive criticsm.

I remember people saying how the PS2 was the worst console ever or that XP sucks when it was released. Look at where they are now. As long as we learn and never close the door to change and improvement, I don’t think we should be afraid of making mistakes. I am still a huge Propeller fan. For one, I admire your team’s dedication in answering everyone’s queries.

It takes a lot to do that. Good luck man, we are all watching where things will go.

Chris

4 On August 30th, 2008, Benny said: