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| 12 MILLION USERS, 130,000 COMMUNITIES, AND GROWING... |
| OCTOBER 2007 |
| Special New Features Issue |
| You asked for it, and you got it! We've created an exciting bunch of new features that you requested and your users will love, so this issue will focus on all the new goodies in store. |
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| Even More Toolbar Customization |
| The community toolbar you create with Conduit is yours and YOU know best what to put in it. What we do is to offer you the best tools we can, so you can create a great toolbar. |
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| Until now, there were a few components whose icons were not fully customizable. So we started off by making the Chat icons customizable, and now we've added more customizations. |
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| For the components below, as in the Chat, you can choose from predefined icons or upload your own: |
- E-mail Notifier
- Privacy Button & Popup Blocker
- Weather Forecaster
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| These new customizations give you more control of how your community toolbar looks! |
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| But what about the RADIO, you ask? Read on... |
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| Radio Skins! |
| We don't have to tell you that users love the toolbar radio, one of the most popular components we offer. The radio really increases community toolbar stickiness. |
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| Until now, you couldn't control how it looked on your toolbar (you were stuck with the default silver look). Not any more! You can now choose from a rich, colorful set of radio skins. |
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| To pick a skin for your radio, just login to your toolbar Control Panel, edit the radio, and choose the skin that best enhances your toolbar's look. |
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| User-Added Radio with Local Stations |
| Let's say that EVEN with the great new skins, and even though we can't imagine why, you still decide not to include the radio by default in your community toolbar. You still want to keep your users happy, right? |
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| Now they can add the radio by themselves. |
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| As of the latest toolbar version, in both IE and Firefox, your users can choose to add the radio (very similarly to how they can add the E-mail Notifier and Weather Forecaster). |
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| Not only that, they'll automatically get a set of local radio stations based on their location. How's that for full service! |
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| If you don't see the radio in the Toolbar Options menu yet, you can upgrade immediately to the latest version by reinstalling your toolbar. |
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| Get All Five Toolbar Stars! |
| Many of you have already noticed the stars at the top of your community toolbar Control Panel. They show your toolbar's rank based on quality. What determines quality, you ask? Many things, and number of installations is only one of them. |
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| There are lots of other factors that are just as important, such as number of active users, how long users keep your toolbar (stickiness), and how useful your toolbar is (usage ratio). |
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| How can you rack up more stars? |
- Work on your promotions! Get some ideas.
- Make your toolbar more useful to your users, by giving them the components, news, resources, etc. that they need.
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| How do users see the ranking? |
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| When users in the Conduit Network run across a site that has a Conduit-powered community toolbar, they see a tooltip with information about the toolbar so they can easily add it to their browser. (As you know, this is part of the Conduit Grouping technology that's taking the web by storm.) |
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| That tooltip will now also show your toolbar's rank. |
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| If you want, you can opt to keep your toolbar rank private using the Account tab in the Control Panel. |
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| Toolbars Pick Up Speed |
| The Conduit Network is constantly growing, and we got the entire Conduit team involved in our latest infrastructure upgrade. All of us from engineers to designers care a lot about performance, and have no doubt: we're staying on top of it. |
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| So here's a look at our latest improvements: |
- Another rack of shiny new servers - you can already feel the difference!
- Streamlined Control Panel - for a faster and better user experience. Just try moving components around in your community toolbar and you'll see. (And check out the Edit menu's new look while you're at it.)
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| Help 12 Million Users Find Your Toolbar |
| Millions of users out there have Conduit-powered community toolbars, and we want to help you get access to them. |
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| With our phenomenal Grouping technology, when one of these users runs across your website, their toolbar notifies them of your toolbar, so that they can easily add your toolbar to their browser. |
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| Making sure the toolbar notification works for your site |
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| In order to make sure that the notification works on all pages (for example, on sites with frames or when you've hosted your Toolbar Download page on your site), you can now add a META tag to your web pages. This tag will ensure your toolbar is always detected. |
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| This is the META tag that you can add to the HEAD section of your site: |
<meta name="Toolbar" content="http://YourToolbarName.ourtoolbar.com"> |
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| The URL that you enter needs to be the original download page URL that you got with your toolbar (even if you aren't using it and have an external page instead). |
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| Getting Gadgets the Easy Way |
| Now it's easier to add gadgets to your community toolbar. We know you're into gadgets (so are we), and we're moving forward on this for you. |
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| Meet the Predefined Gadgets Button |
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| When you add this new component, you'll get a predefined list of gadgets in a drop-down menu on your toolbar. As with all toolbar drop-downs, you can work with it: remove items, add additional items, change the texts, change the icons, etc. |
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| As you know, your users can add gadgets from the gadgets library. Stay tuned for more improvements from the publisher end...we're on the case. |
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| So have a great fall, everybody, and we can't wait to hear your reactions to all this in the Conduit Community Forum. |
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| The Conduit team |
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