Hey Duders,
 
We just deployed another small addition to go with the new follow / activity code we pushed last week. This feature was launched last week for mods and staff and was opened to all users earlier today.


This page is just a start and will definitely see some more work in the next few weeks -- but its a preview for the type of feed we're working towards. Head over there when you get a chance and let us know:

• what you like
• what you dislike
• what you want to see in this activity feed (more images, more forum posts, more relevant information, etc)
• is it too "spammy" -- what could be filtered out to make it more interesting
• what would make this feed more useful - being able to filter by content type, or by user?
• voting - would it make sense to allow you to vote activity up and down?
• comments -- would it make sense to be able to comment on activity?
  

 
We're laying the foundation right now and we're trying to gather feedback from you guys earlier than later -- so if you have any ideas they are welcomed, cause in the end, we're building all this stuff for you guys!
 
And as always, we're looking for bugs -- so if you come across any -- let us know.

Love,
Coonce

Forgot to mention in my earlier blog post, that we just added two activity types to the activity stream: 
 

• Images (these are back and streamlined into one line)
• Achievements (hoo-ya!)

 
Love,  
Coonce

Hey duders. 
 
We just deployed some new code earlier this afternoon. I've blogged about the changes before. Here are the exact changes: 
 

• Friends: The traditional 'friends' code is gone - please let me know if you see it referenced on the site anywhere.
• Follow: In place of this is a more Twitter-like model where you 'follow' people (and they may 're-follow' you back). This should make it easier to track activity, blogs and status updates of the people (and soon, games, objects, etc.) you are interested in. All of your old friend data has been migrated over during the downtime today.
• Activity Update: Activity was not scaling properly in its old implementation. With so many users generating so much activity, we had to ultimately take down the 'friends activity' feed to keep the site afloat. We have made pretty big changes and have re-implemented new activity logic that should enable us to bring you your 'followed users' activity in a feed. This is currently being tested w/ Staff and Mods and once we determine that it is stable, we'll be rolling it out to everyone :) We're really excited about this and hope you will be too.

 
Love, 
Coonce

Hey dudes -- its been a minute, so I thought I'd drop a quick note as to what I've been up to over the past few weeks. 
  

Friends and Activity:

We decided to re-work the friend code (its been a little unstable anyway) - so that users no longer have to 'friend' another user (which is a circular relationship) --- instead, we have decided to simplify the process so that you can simply 'follow' the users (and content objects -- more on that later) you're interested in -- much like you can w/ Twitter. 
 
In doing that - we decided to fix activity ---- so now, not only will users have their own activity feed (but you will now get an activity feed based on all of the users you follow as well -- we used to have this feature, but since the site has gotten so large, the solution we had in place did not scale appropriately).   Activity will also now float appropriately on content objects - so if someone adds new trivia associated to Mario, Mario's activity feed will reflect this.
  

Next Steps:

In the following iteration, you should be able to follow any content object on the site and your 'followed objects' feed will include stuff activity generated by users you are following as well as objects you are interested in.  
 
So you could follow the Street Fighter IV page receive activity when new images are added, a user blogs about it, or a new topic is created relating to it. 
 
Anyway, that's what I've been up to -- and I'll be on it for a bit more till its good and solid. Be good team.

Exciting news, we just deployed some new list code this afternoon and added some huge new enhancements to our List system.
 
Creating a list:
We added a bunch of new tools to help you create and manage your lists - you can check them out if you hit this url: 
http://www.giantbomb.com/list/create/

Adding Lists To Your Blogs and Forum Posts:
The big bummer w/ lists before was that you created them and that was it. Cool if you want to manage collection, but not very social, and definitely not very easy for other people to see and talk about. So we decided to throw it into the boards via our editor. Now, all of your lists are available to embed into a Blog or Forum Post using the 'Insert' dropdown in the editor.

Ordering Your Lists: 
Probably the most requested feature by users --- and actually not to difficult to implement. You can now order your lists in 'edit mode' by either clicking the Up/Down arrows next to each list item or by using the number field in between the arrows. Oh, and when you add new items to your list, they now get appended to the bottom as opposed to injected at the top.


 
Comments and Recommendations:
We also added stats to your lists, so you can track how well each of them is received. You'll be able to track your most commented on lists, lists w/ the most user recommendations, etc. from your new list dashboard in your profile.