Hi all!

Lots of stuff going on at PinsideHQ and today I'm rounding up one of the features I've been working on for a while (I actually always work on several new ideas at the same time).

You've all been able to 'follow' Pinsiders for a while now. But aside from providing a convenient list of people who are your favorite people on Pinside there was not a lot of functionality attached to following people. That changes now.

It's called Pinside Connect.

Pinside Connect will give you insight what the people you're following are up to. Keep track of new games they bought, scores they set, posts they made, game ratings, achievements they've accomplished and more!

If you are already following people, you can check it out right now, go to the connect section by clicking the 'connect' status icon in the user status bar in the top right of the screen:

Connect_status_icon_(resized).png

This will generate a list, called 'Following Pulse' with recent activity from all the people you follow:

Following Pulse

In fact, every individual Pinsider has a pulse, which will display as a simple line graph right next to their user name:

Pinsider Pulse activity

This shows you how active they have been in the past 30 days.

...plus:

- You can also manage your following list in the Connect section, and also check out who is following you.
- I have also decided to move PinsideMail from My-Pinside to this new connect section as it really fits well there.
- And more cool Connect stuff is planned to help you connect to other Pinsiders! We're working on some really cool stuff.

..

What else is new?

Easy info/follow/ignore/pm buttons

Hover over someone's backbox avatar to access 4 important features:

Easy_user_buttons_(resized).png

- Show the info blueprint
- Follow the Pinsider
- Ignore a Pinsider
- PM a Pinsider

(by the way, notice how in-active our test user Gizza is? Pulse is almost flat )

Community ranking lists
Remember we used to have a Kings of Karma list in the community section? Since the Karma Points feature does not exist anymore, this has been replaced with 3 new top ranking" lists: Most followed, most achievement points and highest login streak. The latter is still a rather new statistic so this still needs to evolve. All of these are all for fun of course, but the intention is to promote the new features too!

Achievements
Some new achievements have been added! Achievements also show up in Pulse, so it will now be easier to keep track of the achievements you (and your friends) have unlocked.

UI changes
- The big color bar title is a bit smaller making room for a site-wide navigation path.
- Tabs are now more useable and also work better on smaller screens.

Tons of small tweaks, bugfixes, design changes
I'm notoriously bad at keeping track of all the work I do on the code, but almost 25% of all code has been touched in this update. So, plenty of new bugs, performance tunes, tweaks and changes to make Pinside life better!

Comments? Suggestions?
Please be kind! I'm all for constructive criticism, but also love positive feedback!

Check your privacy settings in My Pinside > Settings

Just to clarify, Pulse does not display more information about you then was already visible to others before the update. It respects your privacy settings concerning collection, ratings, scores etc.

Pulse only brings all your activity together in one list and groups it by day. This way, you can keep track of what your friends (or people who you find interesting) do. It's a lot like the forum activity tab in that regard but I'm hoping to make Pinside profiles more than just their forum posts.

I have plans to extend Pulse with other functionality. E.g. Allow Pinsiders to upload cool photos to their Pulse. Or let them "star" posts they like to be shown on their Pulse. Or let them paste outside links to cool websites or Youtube videos or whatever. It's clearly inspired by Twitter and that's kind of what I aim it to be: a way to tell your followers: "hey, look at this cool content!"

As with most things on Pinside: you can choose if you want to enable this feature. If you don't like the idea/concept, simply go to your privacy settings and set Pulse to a more private setting. Maybe only let friends see your Pulse (friends are mutual followers). Or set it private completely so noone can see it. It's all your choice.

Thanks Ryan

The concept "to follow back just to check who the Hell is that guy" does not make sense to me. Why would you follow someone who you do not know? I mean, surely you can first go and check out their posts, their collection, their ratings etc to decide if this person is interesting enough to follow, *before* you start following them?

Well it could be possible that this feature is not for you

Seriously though, I wouldn't have come up with this feature if I didn't think it was a good idea. I'm trying to create more social cohesion between Pinside members. It's always been one of the goals of this site: connect pinheads.

And while you're only seeing potential "stalkers", I'm enjoying following my friends and some of the more interesting people on Pinside. I learn that one of my friends adds a game to her wishlist and another friend bought a game that we discussed at TPF. And it shows me high scores from friends who I can then send PMs to congratulate. It points me to new reviews from a Pinsider whose reviews I like reading. And lots more! And we're only getting started with these "automatic" Pulse items.

You bet!

No seriously, Brian. I'm following you because (through all the bullcrap) you actually have a lot of interesting stuff to say about pin restoration.

Appreciate it!

Sending yourself a PM is a great way to test if your PM capabilities are functioning correctly. Ignoring yourself should not be possible (when you try it should tell you it's not possible), let me check on that... And obviously you cannot follow yourself, that could get the Pulse stuck in an endless loop

There is nothing wrong with people following you. It probably just means they find your posts interesting etc. If you don't want them to see your collection items or rating updates you can set the privacy settings accordingly. If you would only like approved followers to see your Pulse (which is honestly kind of pointless because your forum activity is and always has been accessible by everyone) you could even switch the whole Pulse system to "friends-only" and then only people who follow you and who you follow back will be able to see your activity.

Again, all the data in your Pulse is already accessible by visiting your profile page and browsing through the individual tabs.

I like that idea, let me ponder on that for a bit.

Thanks. Yep and I'm working on some other stuff regarding scores that will be fun too.

It was a space issue. So I was planning for a search box to pop up when clicking or hovering over the search icon. But ran out of time. Still on my to do list though.

If you're interesting, I'll follow you

I renamed "Game Archive" to "Games" because it's shorter.
The bug is obviously not supposed to happen, thanks for reporting!

Awesome. That should reveal to you two new achievements that Martijn himself created. How fitting!

Whoah guys, following has nothing to do with stalking. At least, that's definitely not the thought behind it. In that respect I think some are reading too much into it or are frankly just being paranoid - it's pinball, supposed to be fun and all that!

The connect feature is "just" another addition to Pinside. There's a lot more to this site than just the forum. Obviously the forum is the biggest section and the most upfront and accessible way to communicate but there's more happening: people are rating games, writing and commenting on stories, adding locations - or editing location games. There are scores being added, photos being uploaded, pinball machines being put up for sale on the market. Events are being added to the calendar - and people indicating they're attending them. And so much more!

I found that a lot of that gets kind of lost in all the rumble of the forum and that's why I wanted to come up with a different way to "stay informed" on what your pinball friends (or people you find otherwise interesting) are doing. Our mission is to connect pinheads and that's what I'm trying to do here.

So who do you want to follow? I'd begin with friends and people in your area. That way you'll find out when "John", who lives near you, is adding a Ghostbusters to his collection. Send him a PM and ask if you can come play it. Or you would learn that your friend Marcus finally really made a killer score on his CFTBL. Now you can offer him to take the game of his hands, there's no more challenge for him You could go and follow Ben Heck to stay up to date on what he's posting. Or Vid. Or Spooky charlie.

Those are just a few examples. With over 35,000 people posting in one place, things can sometimes become a bit disconnected - Pinside Connect and the Pinside Pulse are the start of a concept that will hopeful proof useful to the community and if they are, they'll likely be extended with other features later this year. I was thinking about also adding the ability to follow games (get informed when there are posts, ratings or other stuff regarding a game), locations (stay informed of game updates to your favorite locations). Heck you could even follow topics or events. And then the next step in all this could be to add some kind of notification system. But I digress.

Thoughts, ideas? Let me know! Hate being followed? Go to your account settings and disable other people's access to your Pulse. You don't have to like everything Pinside offers (although I really hope you'll give it a shot!)

It was an experimental feature that isn't finished yet. I forgot to disable it briefly and that's why you have seen it

While my intentions for the follow feature have nothing to do with popularity, I do see what you mean. Having a little status icon under your name listing "only" 1 follower may be kind of disheartening. Again, following should not be a status thing but I do realise that's how some will interpret it.

After some discussion here, I have decided to remove the followers count from the user stats. At least for now. I have also removed "followers" from your profile summary page (since it's not directly relevant to your own profile as you have no choice in who follows you), leaving only an overview of who you are "following".

I might put following and followers behind a privacy option in the future, although I do not see that need right now.