Opening up the site … a bit

Never let it be said that we don’t listen to the feedback we get!

By far the most popular request we have had is to open up the site so that you can view the details of missions (and the responses) without having to register or sign in.

After much debate we have decided to implement this. So look out for it in the coming days.

You’ll still have to sign in / register to create missions or respond to missions obviously.

What do you think? Is this a good idea? 

I love IE6 … not!

Things are going pretty well in the sense that people are publishing really interesting missions and we’re getting loads of new missioners all the time. But … some people are having problems registering with the site. There are two main problems:

1. the page does not render properly in some instances
2. there are timeout issues during registration in some instances

And guess what? The only people that are having problems are those using Microsoft Internet Explorer version 6!!!

Aaaaagh!!!

The site works perfectly in Firefox (versions 1 and 2) on Mac and PC, Safari (versions 1 and 2) on Mac and IE7 on PC which covers the vast majority of users. We’re working to resolve these issues but it is very frustrating when you try to do things properly using css.

We’re asking people to hang in there and we will email them when we have resolved the issues (we have their email addresses from failed registrations).

It does mean that we have had to delay any serious promotion of the site though.

We’re working round the clock and we hope to have it all resolved pretty soon.

The debate on foreign language

Well I’m pleased to report that we’ve had quite a bit of interest in the site in the first few days. Lots of people have joined as “missioners” and are creating missions as “commissioners” and helping others as “responders”.

But …

There’s quite a lot of Spanish content on the site. This is great and I fully encourage it because I want this to be a global site and therefore have content that relates to people all over the world. But I had thought I would only have foreign language (non-English) content at a later stage – after beta – when we could have different language sections in the site or maybe even attempt to do translations on the fly.

So the question is …

Should I leave it as it is and just let the site find its own level or should I politely ask the Spanish content posters to limit the amount of Spanish content?

Different aspirations

Already there have been lots of people signing up as “missioners”. And we’ve had some interesting missions so far. I’ve noticed three distinct types of missions:

1. wacky and just for fun (“to take over the world”)
2. sensible with a clear purpose (“to find a aluminum handbrake button for my car”)
3. curious and unsure (“to live forever”)

Interestingly, (in the first day) I’ve also heard from two people who think that mymyssion can help them commercially. Warwick wanted to know if mymyssion could help him charter out his small yacht. Janet wanted to know if mymyssion could help her publicise her new web site which is a dating site for single golfers (www.teeforetwo.co.uk).

The answer to both of them is YES! I told Warwick to sign up as a missioner on mymyssion and be sure to choose boating, holidays and travel as interests. That way he will be alerted every time anyone publishes a mission to do with this. He can then respond to them offering them his yacht.

I told Janet pretty much the same thing and also that there were already some missions to do with golf and that she ought to respond to them – and any future missions to do with golf. She could also get a friend to create a mission asking how to meet golfers and then she could respond to this.

mymyssion is a great way to demonstrate that you have a solution to a real problem or that you can meet a demand.

Advertising ideas

We’re launching a competition to create a video ad on YouTube which brings people to join the mymyssion web site. Check out the competition here.

We’re also hoping to get some people submitting us with cool/funny/exciting ideas to promote the site.

Some early ideas relating to the message we want to get across are shown below. (These are only roughs!) Click on the thumbnail to view them.