Zipiko Blog

Rethinking Zipiko

Richard von Kaufmann

We are currently rethinking the best way to take Zipiko forward and will not be doing any ‘development’ work on it for a while. We would love to hear how you think it might be best improved. In the meantime here are some of the improvements on the current wish list (please note that it is in no particular order):

IMPROVEMENTS:

• Public Events: An option to make your plan visible to all Zipiko users. Immediate content for 1st time users is crucial.
• Connecting to other Networks: import events from other services via APIs, eg – Eventful, Meetup, etc
• Better Connections: Improved the feeds in and out to Facebook, calendars,Twitter, etc.
• Improved Group Features: To control who sees your intentions and connect better with existing communities.
• Intention Seeding: Provide invitees with selectable options: activity, location, date. Think enhanced Doodle.
• Improved Commenting Features: The ability to take notes at meetings and share them with the other attendees.
• Finding Past Meetings: Go back in time to see who was there and what was said.
• Calendar View: See all plans by the month.
• Buddy / Group Icons: Instantly see who or which group posted the plan.
• Visual Clue Icons: Instantly see the theme of the event: coffee, beer, sport, walk, etc
• Map View: See the upcoming events (public & private) on a local map, so that you can quickly and intuitively filter events by location.

FIXES:

• Web Service: Redesign and rebrand Zipiko as a web-based, cross-platform service: Even though Zipiko has ‘always’ been a browser-based service, we now realize that our initial attempts to promote it as a mobile-centric service have backfired – since the majority of people are not yet regularly accessing the Internet via their mobiles. Trying to meet the demands of the immense diversity across mobiles was also proving to be an inefficient drain on our limited development resources. However, thanks largely to the iPhone and improving mobile-browser standardization, mobile Internet is making fast inroads and, after all the experience we have gained in the field, we will not neglect this growing trend.
• Email Only: Remove the mobile/SMS signing in and invitation options. People are understandably reluctant to give away their precious phone numbers and this extra option has added unnecessary technical complications and user confusion. SMS services (especially in the US) are fraught with difficulties and the costs are an unavoidable issue. Instead of the slightly impersonal SMS invitations, we will shift the focus to copyable links (events, groups, personal, etc) that can be sent through the users’ normal email systems. However, we can still provide some SMS services (such as reminders) as 2nd-layer additional options.

I guess that is plenty to keep us busy for quite a while. Please do suggested anything that you think could improve Zipiko.