We’re happy to announce that Busy.org has entered Public Beta. Invitations are no longer needed in order to get access to our platform.
It's official ! The Busy.org Closed Alpha is about to reach its final day. Before opening the gates to the public Beta, more than 200 people were invited to test our Alpha since November, mostly developers and active Steemians. As for today, we have an announcement to make:
This is the beginning of our Public Beta!
Here's an excellent opportunity to test Busy Beta release and help us make the next release the best ever.
JOIN BUSY.ORG NOW!
Polishing the platform and preparing it for mainstream adoption does take a lot of time. We took our quality standards to the highest levels to bring this public Beta release for the 1st February, the announced Date, our D-Day. This is just the beginning and the best is yet to come!
This release is the culmination of several months of work and reflexion to build a very strong and scalable platform architecture for this next-gen social media, communication platform but also for the marketplace to come. The most difficult part is done: build a strong team, start a robust and scalable software architecture, to honor our mission.
The Beta goals
Remember, this is a Beta version. There are still several works in progress and not everything may work 100% correctly.
We’ll be monitoring feedback from users closely, and making improvements as quickly as possible.
The Public Beta is a pre-release product which is openly distributed and allow our team to gather data to improve the product and fix issues.
During February and March we will work on a full User Interface/Experience redesign, with the help of the community feedbacks.
Special Thanks
We’d like to thank everyone who participated in the Closed Alpha. We gathered a lot of feedbacks. This allowed us to gain valuable insight into how our systems perform, to help us fixing several issues and to be confident about moving to Public Beta.
We’d also like to thank all of our donors/sponsors for their support. We’re happy to have announced earlier this month that @jamesc and @cass are our new Gold Donors, joining @smooth. @steemit is now Platinium Donor.
Check the Busy Donors page: https://busy.org/donors
Here is what you can expect from this beta:
Features:
- Identity managed by SteemConnect
- Favorite user or category with quick access on sidebar
- Bookmarks
- Editor: in-post image upload, direct markdown, options on text-selection
- Drafts: Autosave multiple drafts
- Private message: 1to1 Chat
- Category Chat: each #category (#photography, #steem, etc.) has its own channel Chat
- Emoji
- Different Layouts: Card and List views
- CoinmarketCap Steem rate
- Responsive interface (Desktop, plus mobile and tablets friendly)
- Youtube, Twitch and SoundCloud direct embedding from URL
- Internationalization: UI translation 6 languages (partial)
Known issues:
Listed on GitHub (https://github.com/adcpm/busy/issues)
Users of the beta release are encouraged to report any bugs, issues or errors directly on GitHub issues, providing accurate naming and screenshot or animated Gif or the bug.
Please check previously posted issues on GitHub to find good examples.
Missing features:
- Notifications
- Other Layout view (Grid like Pinterest, Custom Busy Layout to come after redesign phase)
- Resteem Tab/Filter: for a while, it was a community request, and it's coming in our next commits. For now, we only removed Resteemed posts from your Feed to show only Author posts for cleaner feeds
- Replies Tab: to display your replies
- Improved Wallet/Transfer
- Improved Voting details on Posts/Comments
- Improved Internationalization: display language Flag on post, more language filters, and settings to come
Roadmap 2017
Sign up and log in
Improve the flow with SteemConnect and enable a log in with email and password directly on Busy with optional 2FA security. Sign-up process would also be done on Busy.org to avoid any friction
On-boarding process
Help user that are not familiar with Steem/Steemit or cryptocurrency to signup and release their first successful post, follow their favorites topics via categories, authors, and communities.
KPI management and user-retention
We want to spend a lot of time to track and improve user retention on the Busy platform.
Branding and UI/UX rework for mainstream adoption
We are looking for a logo with more identity. We're following different leads and Designers that will eventually contribute to our new branding.
We want to rework the interface based on the feedback we gather since we've started the project and add more illustrations and fun on the site.
A new user experience will be proposed as we start to add other apps like Marketplace for good and services
Scalable Translation solution and Busy Community Help Center using the blockchain
Steem blockchain gives the ability to store content and let users value it. We want to use this ability to create a solution for Busy interface translation. Users would be able to add translations for any language and/or vote for the best translation on a custom interface.
We want to build a custom interface as an internal Busy app, that would allow users to contribute to the platform by posting suggestions, feedbacks, translations, etc. and vote for the best choices.
Wisdom of the crowd/Power of the community
Search
Give the possibility for user to search for a post, community or an author, with several filters
Busy Apps and Marketplace
Open a marketplace for goods and services. Allow user post for a product or service to sale on a specific and redesign interface, including Escrow with private/encrypted messaging.
Allow different apps integration on our Busy platform
iOS / Android and desktop applications
Deploy Busy on all platforms using most of the current website codebase with some gestures and user experience improvement
Crypto exchange, FIAT Deposit, Debit Card
We want to make it easy for users to change any crypto to Steem and reverse or buy on the marketplace with another crypto using and integrating for example ShapeShift or BlockTrades solution.
New users should also be able to deposit/withdraw from/to FIAT sources. We want to make this as easy as possible
Busy Token and funding
On December 2016 we announced an introduction to our Donation Terms and had a nice response from the community. We decided to implement the Busy Donor badge on Profile, and Busy Donor list.
The Beta release is only the first step of the Busy project.
Our goal is to prove that we have the appropriate, qualified resources and vision to bring new value-adding, with the strength and responsiveness that our ecosystem needs to succeed.
Busy is still discussing different possibilities to get the required funding. It will allow us to work on our 2017 Roadmap and complete platform. (need at least 200K SBD)
The team is still deeply discussing the idea of having greater benefits for our Donors and is working towards this end. As we mostly rely on Donations, for now, it's important for Busy to find the best way to incentivize it. This type of "crowdfunding" could work for Busy.
Creating a Busy token (for example with Bitshares UIA User-Issue Assets) and give it to our donors and the Busy team could be a solution. Using reward repartition pool, the funds received from this blockchain enhancement would be redirected into a our development fund that can help bootstrap new features and services and cover Busy expenses and development. But it will also be redirected to backup the Busy token value. It will allow Busy to become viable and autonomous, and help our Donor and the Busy team to have monetary incentive for their faithful commitment to the Busy project.
We took the decision to start discussing it with our Donors and different Advisers and will take a final decision during February after the Beta release.
All rewards from the @busy.org account and donations will be used to fund our projects
Links
- Busy Public Beta release: https://busy.org
- January News
- Busy GitHub, source code, issues, contributors: https://github.com/adcpm/busy
- Busy Donors
- Busy Team
- Busy Help/FAQ: we will provide from tomorrow a full FAQ for new users! Helping them to understand Busy and Steem
Free Busy.org Beta preview/demo
Login
Editor / Draft
Private Messaging
Channel Chat
Bookmark
Switch to List view/layout
Enjoy !
To support the Busy team, vote for our witness @busy.witness