News and Views from the Regator Team

This year will be Regator’s third trip to Vegas for BlogWorld and New Media Expo, which is consistently one of the most useful–and fun–conferences we attend. As the “world’s largest social media conference,” it draws more than 200 top-notch speakers and has some incredible education and networking opportunities.

The event runs from Thursday, October 14 through Saturday October 16. And although it’s pretty common for attendees to show up on Friday, I’d encourage you to get there on Thursday if you can because this year, Darren Rowse of ProBlogger and Chris Garrett of CopyBlogger will be hosting a special ProBlogger Track on the first day. (Disclosure: I write a weekly column at ProBlogger but I’d endorse Darren and Chris’s track even if I didn’t because these guys are total pros with a lot of wisdom to share.)

After the tremendously positive response we got last year, the Regator crew will be on hand to host our expo booth again and you’ll also see us at all the networking events, catching up with old friends and making new ones.

The full-access pass is $895 now but will go up to $1195 after September 16. The weekend pass for Friday and Saturday is $395 now then jumps to $495. If you register by clicking ye olde BlogWorld logo to the left, you can support Regator and register at the same time. It’s like feeding two birds with one piece of bread (we’re not for the killing and the stone throwing around here). We hope to see you at the Mandalay Bay!

In the weeks since we relaunched Regator we’ve be doing a lot of stuff behind the scenes to make the site even faster and to improve the overall user experience of the site. Last week we moved to new dedicated servers, hosted by local company, A Small Orange and we’ve been very happy with the service. Among other small tweaks here and there we’ve been working on some things that should help you get more out of the site. Although we are well indexed by Google, our Post Profile page needed some extra love. It looked okay, and it was converting much better than the last iteration, but really it wasn’t where we wanted it to be. So we sat down and took another shot at it. So what’s different? Quite a bit. Here’s what we’ve done:

Complete Post Profile Do-Over
This is what happens when you are doing a major redesign on a site; it’s a chaotic rush and sometimes you need to just settle on good enough… We did that with this page. It actually was a big improvement over the previous version but we wanted to make it even easier to quickly scan the page and understand some of the additional resources we put around a post. We’re going to be doing some additional tweaks on the language and some AB testing, which shouldn’t take too long as this page is highly trafficked.

Take a look at the new Post Profile

Giving People What They Want
A lot of visitors find this page from Google, so we have to show insane amounts of relevancy/value, as simply as possible, within the first 20 milliseconds. We’ve changed it around so it now very clearly features the main post as the focal point. We’ve also made it clearer how to get to the source blog, which is really important. Around the main post, we’ve added related topics (when we’ve got good ones) and related posts. In doing this, we’ve really tried to keep this above the fold as much as possible. Not too many of our users are on low resolution (below 1280×800), but we want to make sure that we make sense and don’t look (or are) spammy.

Getting Social
Yep, we’ve gone ahead and launched the first part of our Facebook social graph integration. This is just step one in our plan to heavily socialize the site, providing useful tools for people to find and share great blog content. That being said, we’re not trying to become a social network; that’d be dumb. As much as a lot of people want to bitch about Facebook, they win. Right now at least… We have added the ability for Regator users to “Like” posts and comment on the post with their Facebook credentials. This is in addition to the ability to share posts to their Facebook wall, which we’ve had for over a year. We are moving step by step on this and will be adding more social features in the near future. Keep an eye out!

Other Great Stuff We’re Doing…
Our API is just about ready for prime-time. It’s in testing right now and there will be more details in the next few weeks. You can also keep up with the weekly blogosphere trends on our weekly Problogger column. Every week, Kimberly, our editorial director, not only gives the past week’s blog trends but puts them in the context of how to write better blog posts, using examples from the blogs writing about the trends. The posts have been really well received by Problogger readers with great discussion about each week’s theme.

As mentioned  in our last post, Team Regator went to LessConf last weekend, and man, were we impressed. Why? We’re glad you asked (in no particular order)…

1. The event’s sense of humor and utter lack of pretentiousness
2. Incredible speakers: Cameron Moll, Chris Wanstrath, Saul Colt, Dan Martell, the 37 Signals crew, Clay Hebert, Alex Hillman, and our personal favorite: Peldi Guilizzoni of Balsamiq (whose talk kinda sorta blew me away)
3. Co-organizer Steven Bristol’s willingness to ask absolutely anything during speaker interviews
4. Co-organizer Allen Branch’s general awesomeness and hard work
5. A presentation slide with a crazy-adorable squirrel picture that rocked my face off
6. A great venue with comfy chairs, ample power points, and free parking
7. The fastest wi-fi in human history
8. Free conference t-shirts that we’ll actually wear because they’re not corporate-y or lame
9. Free neck and head massages from the lovely and sweet Alicia Durrence
10. StickerMule stickers for all!
11. Free books: Rework, Linchpin, and Lessons for Leaders
12. TechDrawl’s ever-present, hard-working camera crews capturing the entire event
13. Monkey hats!! (MailChimp has the coolest swag of any company evar.)
14. Encouragement and advice from loads of smart peeps
15. The straightforwardness and candor of both speakers and attendees
16. Saul Colt’s sense of humor
17. The Google Group that was set up to help attendees get to know each other in advance
18. Cameron Moll’s tip on blurring design to see if the system of heirarchy is working
19. Amazing attendees and speakers from places as far away as Ireland, Italy, and Canada gathering right in our backyard
20. Free drinks from BeanStalk App and MailChimp at Whiskey Park
21. MailChimp’s generous sponsorship of the Noni’s afterparty, which was absolutely berserk22. The look on the faces of the lingerie-clad burlesque models, who were dousing the room in body glitter, when I walked into the ladies room with a monkey on my head
23. Unlimited, socially responsible free coffee from Land of a Thousand Hills
24. Pancakes, BBQ, mac n’ cheese, pizza, and other noms, served in the conference center so we had time to chat rather than wandering the streets looking for a restaurant
25. The organizational skills and unending cheerfulness of @GetSweetie
26. Jessica Barnett’s great list of LessConf people on Twitter
27. A summer-camp vibe that led to making more talented, genius new friends than we’ve made at any conference outside of sxsw
28. Learning about Grooveshark, which is super-nifty
29. At least twice as much inspiration as we get from most conference

There are more. We are tired and forgetting some. As soon as we hit “publish,” they’ll come to us, but suffice it to say that we hope LessConf will come back to the ATL next year. Allan and Steve can count on Regator’s support. Thanks to everyone who made last weekend such a great time.

Want to read more about LessConf? Regator can help: http://regator.com/search/lessconf/

Team Regator is heading to LessConf this Friday and Saturday, and we’re pretty excited about it. The conference was held in Jacksonville last year but is bringing its impressive roster of speakers (from companies such as 37Signals, Thoora, Flowtown, GitHub, TribesWin, Balsamiq, IndyHall, and Authentic Jobs) to Atlanta this time around. Regator is thrilled to help welcome the hosts back to the ATL (their product, LessAccounting, was the winner of this year’s Startup Riot, edging out very worthy opponent Regator, which tied for second).

The casual event will cover topics from entrepreneurship, startups, coding, UI/UX, and design to marketing and biz dev as well as social media, blogging, entrepreneurship, and other stuff Team Regator is oh-so interested in. Though, admittedly, the free head and neck massages are the real reason we’re going.

Attendees also get a free copy of Rework by Jason Fried and David Heinemeier Hansson of 37Signals, Linchpin by Seth Godin, and Lessons for Leaders by Kevin Milden, plus a $100 credit to StickerMule. As if that’s not enough, there will be bacon-filled pancakes…if you’re into that sort of thing. The one-third of Team Regator that is not vegetarian will be all over that business.

LessConf’s $402 price tag might not be in every startup’s budget, but the caliber of speaker, combined with the small number of attendees (only about 200 people, held at GTRI), and aforementioned bonus books and schwag certainly add a lot of value to the event. (Hint: If you head over to Mixergy, it’s entirely possible that you’ll find a discount code.) There are still a few spots left, and it definitely looks as if it will be worth the time for anyone interested in startups, UI, social media, and bacon-filled pancakes. We hope to see you there and will be back with a wrap-up blog post about the event on Monday.

Saturday night’s after-party will be at Noni’s Bar & Deli, where Regator cofounder Kimberly Turner will be DJing after 11pm. It’s a public party, so even if you’ve missed LessConf, stop by to say hi, grab a drink, and/or dance.

We’ve been working on the new version of Regator for months and this week we launched it into the wild after a brief, yet extremely useful, private preview period. We’ve got a bundle of emotions running through us right now; most notably relief and excitement in what we’ve been able to do.  The preview was a massive success with thousands of people wanting in. Those who did get in really helped us out by providing great feedback. We actually changed a lot on the front and back ends of the site based on what people were telling us.

User feedback is strange animal… you need to get it, in fact we crave it, but you have to filter it to ensure that it serves the overall vision of the site. This is something that we made the mistake of early on when we initially launched. We listened, which was good, but we took all the feedback and basically went ahead and shot ourselves in the foot a little with features that tried to make the site appeal to everybody. Well, that’s a fools errand. We’ve taken a different approach this time, based on combining feedback with our own experience and judgment on what Regator can be.

Not the Final Version! One of our early progress mockups...

In the 2.0 version of Regator the overall theme is simple. Simple, despite its name, is not simple, it’s bloody hard. We actually had 2 other versions of the redesign pretty much in the can ready to release, but at the end of the day we weren’t satisfied with them. For that I’m very thankful… as the new version that you see is something that we are really proud of, something that we worked harder on than anything we thought possible.  As a result, the great response we’ve gotten has been a relief as much as it’s been awesome and exciting.

Here’s what a few notable blogs have been saying about the new Regator:

“Awesome”
- Download Squad

“In short, if you’re a blogaholic, the new Regator is a must-have tool.”
- Mashable

“The result, in preview now, is a solid data mine for content, trends and topics. In theory, the site could outright replace Web 1.0 engines like Technorati, and it looks to be significantly more useful – no matter your focus of interest.”
- LouisGray.com

“I’ve had a play with the new site and I can tell you that the trending and monitoring tools are not only fun to play with but incredibly useful.”
- The Next Web

Anyways, we’ve got some more new stuff on the horizon that should make Regator even more useful. We’ll be letting y’all know about that very soon. In the meantime, we’re moving to a new server. Once that’s done this week… game on. We’ve set our sights high and we’re going to do everything we can to provide the best online tool for blogs, period. We hope you’ll come along for the ride.

It’s been a while since you’ve heard from us via our blog…but we’ve got a great excuse: We’ve been working, at times literally, around the clock building a better, easier, more intuitive Regator. (Or harder, better, faster, stronger if you’re Daft Punk. And if you’re Daft Punk and you’re reading this blog, leave a comment because you’d make my decade.)

Right now, the redesigned Regator is in private beta at http://preview.regator.com, which means you need an invite code to get in. Fortunately, Mashable, The Next Web, Louis Gray, Download Squad, local blog inDecatur, Crenk, and SheGeeks can hook you up and all had lovely things to say about our pride and joy.

If you’ve been using Regator for a while, thanks; you and your interactions with the current site taught us a lot over the last couple of years about what people want, how they use sites like ours, and how we could improve. The first thing you’ll notice about the new Regator is a cleaner, simpler, more intuitive interface. That was our main goal. Along with that, we’ve added a few other extra touches that we hope you’ll love:

Grouped trends lists – Instead of simply showing you a list of the twenty most-blogged-about stories, Regator’s new trends list groups terms related to the same story.

Improved search – Doing a search now shows which topics and blogs are covering your search term most and allows you to easily filter by date, topic, and blog.

Facebook Connect – You’ll be able to use Facebook Connect to log in (This feature and Delicious integration are not available in the Regator Premium iPhone app until after the private beta period).

Delicious integration – In addition to sharing posts via Twitter, Facebook, and email, you can now easily bookmark posts in Delicious.

Setup Wizard – It’s called the Wizard because it’s pretty magical. Simply entering in four interests will generate a list of topics that you might be interested in adding to your favorites. From there, Regator recommends great blogs to follow as well as keywords to monitor.

Blog Monitor – The Blog Monitor has always been an easy way to keep up with your specific interests (musicians, brands, authors, etc.). Now you can get RSS feeds for individual keywords to get posts about your favorite things delivered to your favorite feed reader.

Improved Blog Profiles – Bloggers, we’ve got new fanciness for you: Profiles now feature a graph of recent posting activity (number of posts per day), related blogs, an easy-to-scan archive, and blogger achievement ribbons.

Trend graphing – In the new Trends tab, you can view and compare graphs showing the blog coverage that any term has received. Stories that cause major spikes on the graph are also displayed. 

If you’re an existing Regator user (or even if you’re not), we’d absolutely love to hear your feedback on the new and improved Regator. We’ve worked really hard on it for months and sincerely hope you’ll enjoy it as much as we do. If you’ve read this far and found that the blogs above are out of invite codes, try using: regatorblog It’ll get you in if you’re one of the first few folks to use it. Otherwise, we’ll be opening it up to the public before long. Thanks for your ongoing support. We really do love our users.

Looking for the weekly blog trends you’re used to seeing here? They can now be found over at Problogger.com. At their new home, they’ll do a better job of spreading the word about Regator and will also provide useful information for the bloggers who read Problogger. Win-win. Love it. Go check them out!

Team Regator is going to South by Southwest Interactive (SXSWi)! To celebrate the journey down to Austin, The Regator Premium iPhone app will be on sale in the app store at a special SXSWi price of $1.99! If you’re going to be there, contact us on twitter (@regator) or give us a call at 404-949-8171! Cheers!

Maybe it’s karma–when I was a kid, my grandfather gave me a hat that said, “I’d rather push my Chevy than drive a Ford.” I grew up in a Chevy family and when I was sixteen, I set my sights on a surf green 1957 Chevy Bel Air (similar to the one in the photo but with four doors and bit less shine). I toiled away serving fries at a fast-food joint until I could afford my dream car then worked to restore it with my dad. It’s still in his garage in Missouri. So it makes sense that, all these years later, just when I thought we couldn’t afford SXSW this year, Chevrolet steps up and lends a hand–and provides some adventure, to boot. I wouldn’t whore out my Twitter account for just any corporate behemoth for a free trip to SXSW, after all (or would I?).

How does it work?
On Tuesday, we leave for a roadtrip/scavenger hunt/competition involving 50 unique challenges that we will complete on our way from Atlanta to Austin’s South by Southwest. We’ll be driving the shiny new Equinox that Chevy is providing for the trip (along with video cams, food, hotels, and funding for incidentals) and documenting our ridiculously fun journey with videos, photos, blog posts, and assorted other technological marvels. Oh, and we’ll be wiping the floor with competing with seven other teams from around the country. YOU can help us win. In fact, we can’t do it without you. Keep reading to find out how…

Who is Team Atlanta?
Me (Kimberly Turner): Regator cofounder, adrenaline junkie, animal lover, DJ, writer, adventurer extraordinaire
Scott Lockhart: Regator cofounder, alpaca connoisseur, cricket fanatic, unofficial trashtalker, Australian
Chris Turner: Regator cofounder, beer brewer, king of manual dexterity challenges, wicked smart developer, lover of bacon
Tessa Horehled: Senior strategist at THINK Interactive, Team Chevy ATL Captain, roller derby badass, social media guru (not self-proclaimed)
Linnea Corn McAlvin: Digital media strategist at PHD, brand-new friend of Team Regator and therefore somewhat mysterious but in our brief experience, just about as lovely a person as you are likely to meet anywhere

How can I help make sure you win?
We’re glad you asked. We get points for completing challenges but a lot of our points also come from YOU. We can’t win without you. Kindly follow along with our adventures at our Facebook fan page, on Twitter, and/or at Chevy’s Posterous blog (you’ll see scoring updates and the like here). Then…
1) If you’re on Twitter, the best thing you can do to support us is to retweet like a crazy thing when we post about our challenges. Don’t forget to include “#chevyatl” so that the powers that be can see and count your tweet toward our total. Our total number of followers pales in comparison with North Carolina’s, but we have faith in you guys. Quality over quantity–it’s the Regator motto and it applies here too.
2) If you have a blog and want to support the home team by writing a post about why Atlanta should win, please tag it “#chevyatl” and share it with as many folks as you can without making people hate you.
3) If you’re a relative or friend without a blog or Twitter account, send us warm, happy thoughts and feel free to give us a call with tips, cheers and other jolliness.
4) If you’re AutoTrader, you rock because you’ve already provided us with additional sponsorship support and for that we adore you and shall wear your t-shirts whilst cruising the world in our fine Chevy action.
5) If you’re in Atlanta, come to our Tweetup tomorrow night to see us off. Team North Carolina will be in town by then and will be joining us at The Marlay in Decatur from 6-10. It’d be a real shame if Atlantans were to prank the NC Team in any way while they were there drinking and celebrating our city’s hospitality. A true shame. I certainly hope that doesn’t happen.

Why should I care if you win?
Gee, we’re glad you asked. Cause if you’re in Atlanta and we win, you will not only get a sense of city pride but Chevy’s gonna throw a big ole party for all of us. Epic. Food. Booze. Dancing. Fun. Everything short of fire-eating robots riding elephants. Free. Yes, free. Make it happen.

What exactly are these challenges?
There are 50. If you have any tips or advice to help us accomplish any of these, comment away. This isn’t gonna be short. Ready? Here we go….

1. Get at least three people to do the Electric Slide with your team
2. Interview a server at a diner and them about their most interesting customer
3. Have a picnic on a farm with the animals or farmers
4. Get five people to give you one of their shoelaces
5. Get a Texan to teach you to line dance
6. Devise “Awesome Awards” for strangers. Hand them out randomly with mini-celebrations
7. Order drive-thru in a foreign language
8. Play music on the street with a street musician
9. Stage a Tweetup at a college or university
10. Have one team member get a temporary tattoo of your SXSW hashtag or the Chevy bowtie
11. Hold an eating contest at a roadside stand
12. Arm wrestle a diner chef and WIN
13. Visit a playground where each member must use the slide 10 times and spin on the merry-go-round for two minutes
14. Entire team gets a pedicure
15. In a safe place, everyone must get out, run around the vehicle, and jump back in different seats
16. Go to a public place and start conducting an aerobics class
17. Create road warrior costumes with foil and stage a faux battle
18. One member must climb a rock wall and reach the summit
19. Mess with Texas however you see fit
20. Use the OnStar service in your vehicle to assist a stranded motorist
21. Volunteer to walk dogs at an Animal Rescue/Shelter
22. Visit a library and read to kids
23. Give food to a homeless person and ask them to share their story
24. Help serve a meal at a homeless shelter
25. Clean the windows of someone else’s car as they’re pumping gas
26. Literally donate the shirt off your back to a goodwill store
27. Stop at a nursing home and run a game of bingo
28. Clean up a local park
29. Go through a drive through and pay for the meals of the people in the two cars behind you
30. Take a team photo with the entire staff of a Chevy dealership
31. Find a family portrait location and get a team picture
32. Find and get a picture of the most rundown place that offers WiFi
33. Take a picture in front of a sports stadium
34. Take a picture with a cowboy/cowgirl
35. Take a picture of the funniest road signs you can find
36. Take a picture of the entire team in trunk of the vehicle
37. Take a picture with a police officer
38. Find and take a picture of the most uniquely customized Chevy vehicle you can find
39. Take a team photo at the Welcome Center for each state
40. Interview someone who just purchased a new Chevy
41. Collect Pez dispensers that represent the states and cities you pass through
42. Stop at a local gas station and bring back the most creative trucker hats
43. Collect water from at least 6 bodies of water
44. Bring back a tacky magnet that represents each state you pass through
45. Collect 50 business cards from people who are not in social media
46. Bring back the largest piece of promotional material you can find from a Chevy dealership
47. Bring back 5 newspapers from small towns you pass through
48. Bring back the tackiest postcard from every state you pass though
49. Bring back a souvenir from the most obscure museum possible
50. Bring Back 10 brochures of the random activities you can do in each state