We wanted to take this opportunity to thank everyone for making our launch week a success!

Happily, we find ourselves at the end of the week having met all the goals we’d set, having met some cool folks, and–of course–having learned about a bunch of interesting spots!

Special thanks goes out to all of the folks that have taken the time to report problems and to offer suggestions. We can’t overstate the value of your many contributions.

Thanks again for being part of Spotstory’s story!

Tonight, we took down the ever-so-mysterious landing page from www.spotstory.com, and put up the site we’ve been plugging away on for the past few months.

This doesn’t mean we’re done working on the site—not even close! We’re still looking for any and all feedback: complaints, suggestions, questions, or whatever. You can reply to this email, or look on the “contact us” page to find all the ways you can reach us.

To those who’ve already been on the site, thank you so much for your help and your time. It is difficult for us to express how much we appreciate your support. Thank you. Thank you.

If you haven’t been to the site yet: welcome to Spotstory!

Now, for a little entertainment! Here is the worldwide premier of the Spotstory Launch Theme:

Update

Here is an write up and video interview from MarksGuide.

Another milestone! Today our 100th bug revealed itself, was met, and dispatched. I must admit, I’m not sure how proud we should be about a product defect.

Still, anytime we manage to accumulate a hundred of anything it causes me to remember where we’ve come from and where we are now. A few months ago we were in Aron’s living room tossing around an idea. Now we’ve got a lot of software, a growing body of content, a nascent community of users, and a 100 bugs.

So, so long bug 100!

(It was my fault.)

We (well, Aron) pushed out our first update to the site tonight. It adds a couple of slick features and begins to remedy a major usability problem that our very brave alpha testers pointed out. We’ve still got a pile of bugs to fix (look for an upcoming bog entry on that.)

We’re going to begin letting a few more people into the site soon. If you would like to be one of them at some point go to www.spotstory.com and sign up already!

Over the next couple of days we’ll start to talk a little bit more about what the site actually does, but right now I think I am going to go look for a beer.

Thanks again to all of the pioneering spotstorians!

As mentioned below, yesterday evening we did a very-alpha, wicked soft launch to a couple friends and family. That’s why the blog has been pretty quiet the past week or so.

We’re dribbling the site out to just a couple of people at a time. We intend on providing a smooth initial site visit for users. Since we only know a few people, and those folks can only have one first impression, we’re rationing ourselves.

It’s been tremendously informative. We’ve got a substantial list of things to change, but cumulatively they make the site 50% better already. That isn’t too shabby for a couple hours of feedback.

Thanks to everyone who has helped out so far.

Exciting times!

At some point during the day today Aron made the 100th commit to the spotstory source repository. (He’s usually the one who is committing code while I’m staring dumbfounded at my screen.)

Yes, it’s a small milestone, but the path from our starting point to success will be marked at irregular intervals by lesser and greater acheivements: we try to celebrate even the smallest accomplishment before moving on — even if its just a congratulatory IM.

So, here’s to the 100th commit. Hooray for us.

(p.s. We’re hoping to have some larger milestones to announce in the next several weeks.)