A Work In Progress

Posted about 1 year ago 8 responses

It’s been just over a week since we released Kudocities and the feedback has been flooding in. There are still a few glitches we need to sort out and some changes we need to make. Thanks for all of your suggestions.

Like we said – we’re treating this as a soft launch. Not all of the functionality is live yet and we’re not trying to run at full capacity. It’s more important to us to get it right. You guys are connoisseurs and as such are a tough crowd to please. That’s how we like it. Not that we enjoy being called ‘fuckwitts’ (thanks for that by the way) it’s just that we want to get it right – and if we can get it right for you guys, we know it’ll be right for everyone else.

Some of the most common concerns/queries have been over the name change, the focus on kudos and the ways to spend kudos. We thought now would be a good time to explain some of the reasoning behind these changes.

The name: Some of you have taken exception with the name. I guess it’s a matter of personal preference. It suited the concept behind the new site (which we’ll come to). It is, for the most part, an entirely new site and we needed to move away from the old roots of the Friday Thing and The Friday Project. It has been an honour to be associated with both, however, it’s time to stand on our own two feet. As we said before – it is our plan to launch Kudocities internationally. The name needs to make sense across the board and we want to avoid people making the assumption that the old ties still remain.

The focus on Kudos: Kudos only play as large a part on the site as you want them to. We view them as a way for rewarding people for their contributions to the site. If you go to a restaurant and receive good service you tip the waiter. If someone helps you out you say thank you. Kudos are simply a tangible way of doing this. If you have a question that’s not overly pressing, you might not offer any, or a just a couple. If it’s urgent, or a matter of life or death importance, you may want to offer more. But – and here’s the key – it’s not prescriptive. It’s up to the individual. It adds an extra layer to the site and is a good way of rewarding people for their knowledge, help, humour, friendship, whatever. Make of it what you will. For newcomers, or those of you who don’t have many, you can buy them (yes, we have to be corporate devils) or you can earn them – by contributing to threads, by being picked for editor’s choice (50k), by featuring in the newsletter (100k) and a whole host of other ways that will be going up on the site in the coming weeks.

Spending kudos: The current vouchers on the site are just to give you an idea of how this will work in future. Most of you will not yet have enough to ‘buy’ the more expensive ones. But seeing as kudos have, up until this point, been generated solely by FCL, it would be insane to cash them out at a 1p = 1k rate. We’re not a bank but we’re pretty good at maths.

In the coming weeks we want vouchers for bars and restaurants and, well, you name it! You may not fancy splashing out 1500k for an amazon voucher but 300k for a pint at a KC meet might be pretty tempting. We are talking to numerous businesses about adding their own vouchers. If you, or anyone you know, would like to add your own please let us know: vouchers@kudocities.com. You don’t have to request kudos for these – they can be entirely bespoke. In the coming weeks hopefully everyone will be satisfied that they can afford to spend their kudos on things they actually want. Watch this space.

The Radar: Those of you reading this will have noticed that the Radar has been unmanned of late. We’ve been focusing our attention on the rest of the site, we apologise for our slackness nonetheless. We’re making some big changes to the way the Radar works. We have been focused on London for the past year with FCL. As Kudocities expands however, we want to place the focus on any major city. This could be a quirky interview or a scathing news piece. We have a few things yet to sort out but normal service will resume shortly. Promise.

To this end – we have some brilliant writers on the site. If you fancy writing an article for the Radar to showcase your talents, or just for shits and giggles, why not drop us a line at radar@kudocities.com. There’s 1500k on offer for every piece used.

That’s about it for now. Please keep the feedback coming: savannah@kudocities.com. We really do appreciate it.

Team KC x

kudocities changes feedback under construction radar

8 responses