Note: Previously approved invites do not need to request a new invite for Tweetboard Alpha 2.
We are happy to announce that Tweetboard Alpha 2 will be launching at 3PM AST tomorrow, Friday, August 21!
Originally we had planned to launch an interim Alpha2 update a few weeks after the official release in June, however, the first Tweetboard embodiment ended up being much more stable than we anticipated, to the point were TODAY, Alpha 1 is holding up nicely with well over 10 thousand approved Alpha invites and an average of over 2 million hits PER DAY.
Tweetboard Alpha 2 is a full rewrite
We definitely learned a few lessons during Alpha 1, many of which lead us to decide recreating the back-end from the ground up. The new Tweetboard is leaner, faster and more secure, HOWEVER, it is not THAT what’s most exciting about Alpha 2, but the game-changing updates it features.
At Zero Hours (3PM Friday) a Blog post will be published detailing the updates in the new version. For now, we’ll leave you with a short list of enhancements in Alpha 2:
- Alternative tab design – A beautiful new tab choice especially designed for sites where the vivid (sometimes referred to as “intrusive”) nature of the original tab is not ideal.
- Surprise (MAJOR) feature to promote increased usage/engagement from your site visitors. This one is game-changing!
- Front-end design updates for increased usability.
Alpha invites closing at hour zero
As the title of this (our first) blog post reads, we are closing our alpha-invites at hour 0, concurrent with the release of Tweetboard Alpha 2. There are a few reasons for this:
- We’ve surpassed our goal # of testers for Alpha 1, in fact, more than doubled it, requiring only minor updates to our original infrastructure.
- Alpha 2 introduces a new (super awesome) data exchange approach (best way I’m able to describe it without actually saying what it is
). The new approach *is* more resource intensive than the original approach, therefore we’ll need to gauge our infrastructure needs more closely as we roll out the new Tweetboard. - After this release, we’ll go though more speedy iterations, including a roadmap of specific updates for Alpha 3 and Alpha 4 (TBD in another blog post). It will be safer to roll out the planned updates to a set number of users rather than a dynamically (and rapidly) growing user-base.
We expect to re-open invites once again after Alpha 4.
Seeya again in 24hrs!
