Eduardo's Blog

Sweet Memories...

Just in case you were crazy enough to miss our Launch Party, we're bringing it to you (in 20 pictures or less, that is).

Thanks to everyone who helped us celebrate. It was a great night!

- Lisa

DailyMe Launches Meme-It, Connecting News and Emotion

On some sites, when you see a story you like you can vote for it. And this creates a “most popular” ranking. We’ve decided to take community voting a step further.

Now, when you are moved by a story you can Meme-It!

Meme-It lets you vote for stories based on how you reacted to them. Users can choose from six emotional descriptors by clicking on the Meme-It icon, which is a small graphic based on the smiley. The six descriptors are “insightful,” “tragic,” “humorous,” “uplifting,” “enlightening,” and “just weird.”

Then, on our DailyWe section, you can look at the top stories for each emotional category. For example, you can find the most enlightening stories or the most tragic stories of the day. We think putting the news in better context is always a good thing.

In addition, we’ve made two other enhancements to the site:

• We’ve launched video stories, which can be found across our category pages.
• In the email version of DailyMe (HTML only), you’ll find a redesign that includes better navigation and more content. If you aren’t getting daily emails, go to Edit Settings (link in upper right navigation) and click on Set Delivery to arrange for email delivery on the schedule your prefer.

As always, please try our new features and let us know what you think.

- Neil

Don't Say We Didn't Ask You

We are just days away from our Official Launch Party this Saturday. After MANY discussions and negotiations over the blue and green frosting for our designer cupcakes, I think we are finally good to go!

The entire DailyMe team will be there along with Pete Cashmore and Karen Hartline from Mashable who are co-hosting the event with us. If you have not yet gotten your tickets, there are still some available via Eventbrite.

- Lisa

Party Time

Mark your calendars – the DailyMe Official Launch Party is right around the corner. We will be hosting our party along with Mashable as part of their SummerMash Miami event. So come enjoy a night of cocktails, hors d‘oeuvres, and maybe even a little dancing?

Saturday, August 2, 2008, 7:00 PM
Opium Garden
136 Collins Ave
Miami Beach, Florida

Tickets are limited and have just been released on Eventbrite.

DailyMe also will be giving away 10 tickets to the party to our users. To enter the giveaway, which will be a random drawing, all you need to do is complete our survey about the new DailyMe. Send your name and email address to jennifer [at] DailyMe.com and we'll send you a link to the survey.

We are looking forward to meeting everyone & toasting this milestone!

- Lisa

Happy Birthday Neil!

Thanks for giving us yet another reason to celebrate this week. Happy Birthday & many, many, many more!!

- DailyMe North & DailyMe South

New DailyMe.com News Destination Launched

We’ve just thrown the switch on the next step in the evolution of DailyMe – our DailyMe.com news destination.

This user-centric web destination brings the DailyMe experience to an even broader audience through three distinct editions:

• DailyMe, our original, personalized service;
• DailyWe, where stories are ranked by the community; and
• Top News, selected by our DailyMe editorial team.

All three editions include the robust content, both licensed and user-generated, that users of our DailyMe service have enjoyed for some time. They also bring together many of the technology components we’ve built: our personalization application, delivery platform, advanced news search, rules and processes for importing and classifying content, and RSS feeds. And, of course, users can continue to read licensed news stories without ever leaving DailyMe.

The three editions can be selected via tabs on the DailyMe homepage, where Top News will be the default. (Of course, existing users will continue to receive their DailyMe personalized edition without interruption across all delivery options.)

We’ve been working on this launch for some time and are very excited about the new site. So please test out our new editions and do let us know how you like them.

- Eduardo

Dateline Miami

I don’t think you need to be an investigative reporter to unearth the reason I’m on a panel at this week’s IRE (Investigative Reporters and Editors) conference but not in the printed program.
The answer is in the location: Miami.

When another panelist canceled and they needed a fill-in, I think they decided it would be easier to get a South Florida-based online newsman as a last-minute replacement. Of course, I probably do have something to say on the topic: “Catching them in your Web: Making investigations viral.” In fact, I think DailyMe is part of the equation for getting great journalist work out to a wider audience by matching user interests with top-quality content.

- Neil

DailyMe Holding Aug. 2 Launch Party Together with Mashable

We think it's high time we celebrated the launch of DailyMe's public Beta.

So, DailyMe is teaming with Mashable’s US Summer Tour 2008 to put on the official DailyMe Launch Party. The event will held on Saturday, Aug. 2 from 7-10 pm at the Opium Garden at 136 Collins Ave, Miami Beach, FL. We'll be at South Beach’s hottest club with drinks, appetizers, models and, of course, what would a Miami party be without the beach!

If you're going to be in South Florida that week, please join us. You'll have an opportunity to meet with the DailyMe team -- including Eduardo, Neil & me - as well as others whose names you might not know yet but whose efforts have been critical to the successful launch and development of DailyMe.

So stop by and celebrate with us! Information on how to get tickets will be made available over the next several weeks.

- Lisa

Sharing a win-win story (not your usual Vegas story)

It was great to catch up with so many people last week at the Interactive Media conference in Las Vegas. Panels on the need for better metrics and “are we bold enough?” were among those I found energizing, and seeing the quality work showcased in the Eppy awards was inspiring. But, as usual, it was the hallway and exhibit floor conversations that were most interesting, especially because it gave me the chance to share with many editors and publishers what DailyMe is doing and how we work with news sites.

One topic that arose occasionally is how we license content for DailyMe. It’s a question we’re happy to discuss with news producers, because we believe the approach we take at DailyMe benefits both the creators of content as well as the users of DailyMe, and in the process increases the audience for good journalism.

Unlike the numerous aggregator sites that scrape original news sites and offer their publishers little in return except the occasional click back, DailyMe pays for content it licenses through consolidators and wire services. Much of the license fee we pay flows back to the original publishers, providing them with an additional revenue stream from their content. In most cases, the user reading a story on DailyMe would not have gone to the publisher’s site and found that story, so the publisher is not losing traffic that might otherwise have gone to its own site.

DailyMe users benefit because they can discover and consume some of the best news reporting available all in one easy-to-use interface that can be personalized to their interests. Our users can even have their DailyMe digest printed in a convenient format.

I’m looking forward to finding even more ways to work with top news publishers as DailyMe expands.

-Neil

See You in Vegas?

I’ve been at DailyMe for just over a month, and it’s time to hit the road to catch up with friends in the online news industry.

I’ll be attending the Editor & Publisher's Interactive Media Conference this week in Las Vegas along with scores of editors and publishers from some of the leading news sites. Along with the annual Online News Association conference (this fall in Washington, D.C.), this will be a good event to re-connect with people and share what I’ve been up to since joining DailyMe.

If you’re attending the conference and want to learn more about DailyMe and how we’re working with news publishers, look for me in the corridors of the Rio on Wednesday or Thursday. If you don’t see me, drop me an email at neil@dailyme.com and we can connect.

- Neil