Most of our time last month was spent working on a new optional “slide” layout for topics. Some of our clients, including us, like to pose topics related to imagery, such as photo contests. The normal Grupthink layout works, but can be a little tedious when all you really want to see are the answer thumbnails. So, the new option is being released today on an experimental basis, and currently can only be set by admins. Eventually this option will be accessible to regular users. In the meantime, expect to see a few slide show topics start to pop up!

• Enhanced Youtube linking:
  • Youtube links in topic descriptions now get automatically converted to showing the embedded YouTube video when viewing the topic
  • Youtube links in answer descriptions on topic pages can now be expanded to enable watching the video without having to visit the answer page
  • Youtube links in comments can be expanded to display the video
• Fixed “delete” link not showing for comments on your profile page
• Numerous minor bug fixes and enhancements

For Grupthink Admins

• New: “Media” option to turn topics into slide-show style layout, suitable for photo contests or other topics where the “answers” are pictures. Currently, this option can only be managed by admins and moderators. Just edit a topic, go to advanced settings, and choose “Topic Type: Media”.
• New: Demographic charts showing age/gender breakdowns on answer pages
• New: Add a custom terms of service for your Grupthink-powered site

Today we applied an update with the following improvements:

• New options on main members page allows you to see leaders over the past year, month, and day, in addition to the all-time leaders.
• Added visual graphs on the main members page help indicate scores
• Fixed a bug the caused the topic embed method “1″ (html syndication) to not work in Firefox. If you are experiencing this issue, copy/paste the embed code for that topic again.
• Numerous bug fixes and minor enhancements

Grupthink Admins

• New “Member activity” charts in Admin > Reports > Site Activity
• Styling: Added “extra images” options. This allows you to upload arbitrary images for use anywhere in the site.

We’ve made a minor patch today which includes the following updates:

• New Google Images feature makes adding images to topics and answers easier than ever!
• Improved pagination and tab style for answer lists.
• Fixed issue where searches would remove white spaces between words
• Other minor fixes and improvements

For Admins:

• Setting to restrict the Google Images feature by a specified domain.

We’ve just updated Grupthink sites to address the following:

• Added new topic list to the home page for unregistered visitors.
• Improved style of pagination numbers in topics.
• Fixed issue where searches for answers inside topics would not find all matching answers.
• Speed improvement to the topic lists on the home page
• Fixes issue where Public group topics were being labeled “Panel” topics
• Fixed “No description provided” showing on profile pages
• Fixed issue where “view other maps” was showing in the topic report area, when no other maps were available
• Other minor improvements

For Admins of Grupthink-powered sites:

• Custom pages can contain javascript and other embedded code.
• Fixed: Topic merging resulted in an error

Grupthink-powered sites are currently down as we upgrade to version 3.5. We expect downtime to last a few hours and we’ll keep you posted via Grupthink tweets.

UPDATE: We’re back up, much sooner than expected! Be sure to report bugs using the “Report a Bug” link at the bottom of every page. Thanks!

Today we are releasing Grupthink v3.5! One of the goals of this release was to simplify the visual experience and make topics easier to find and explore. We’ve also improved many of the core features and added some nice maps for both users and admins.

Downtime will commence in a few minutes from posting, and we expect it to last a couple hours. I will keep you posted here and in our Twitter feed of any changes and updates.

Check out these notable improvements:

• Simplified and re-worked UI based on user feedback.
• Many improvements to your topic feed on your personal home page
  • Default topic feed now includes all topics you can read, including private group topics.
  • Layout changed to match other topic lists throughout Grupthink
  • Quicker access to your groups list at the top of your home page when logged in
  • Your home page will remember the last topic feed and format you used.
• New friend activity feed on your home page
• Topic history reels: Updated style and functionality
• Updated vote button styling
• New styling for all user-submitted images allows us to discontinue using 24-bit (large) PNG’s
• Topic page layout improvements
  • Content has been organized so all the important information is easier to find and access.
  • Removed placeholder images on topics and answers where an image was not included to limit visual clutter.
  • Decreased the number of visible options to reduce confusion.
• Topic Maps: Click “Report” on the topic pages to see a map of voter distribution and other info.
• Topic list (/top/) navigation improved and made to be consistent with other topic lists.
• Increased allowed comment editing time to 10 minutes.
• Many other minor updates.

Grupthink Pro Updates:

• Facebook Connect changes
  • Simplified the process for enabling Facebook Connect and content sharing with Facebook
  • Updated our code to resolve issues with changes to the Facebook Connect API
• Topic & Answer Vote Maps: Click “Report” on topic pages to see maps of voter distribution. If you are a privileged member or admin, you can use the select menu to reveal voting maps for specific answers and compare results between them.
• Admin home page updated:
  • Revamped the design and display of the page.
  • Now includes a global site activity feed so you can see, at a glance, everything that’s been happening.

Grupthink Blends Forums and Polling for More Productive Web Discussion

September 16, 2009 – Grupthink, Inc. today announced the immediate availability of its next-generation web discussion platform, making group conversations more engaging and productive. Grupthink, available at http://www.grupthinkpowered.com/, is a web service that makes it easy and affordable for companies and organizations of any size to continuously learn from their customers via their own Grupthink-powered feedback community.

“Discussion forums are a must-have for most customer-facing web properties, but they tend to become noisy and chaotic, making it difficult to take the pulse of the community at large,” said Steven Sundheim, founder and CEO of Grupthink. “Grupthink is a way to conduct more productive and engaging online discussions where community consensus is automatically and continuously revealed.”

As more companies seek ways to adopt open innovation, they use multiple online tools to tap into customer insights, manually monitoring and aggregating feedback into useful data. Grupthink delivers many benefits of these tools in a single survey community platform, saving companies time and money.

Grupthink is a hosted web service, so setup happens in minutes without any software to install. Optional add-ons geared toward consumer research and community management can also be attached to each plan.

Grupthink can work as a visually and technically integrated piece of an existing online community, as well as a standalone web property, making it unique among feedback community solutions. The platform has comprehensive community and content management tools built-in, and uses a unique voting system involving ranked votes and “time traveling” to see how opinions change over time in a single discussion.

Grupthink clients range from individuals with small discussion groups to large companies conducting consumer research. The platform is currently used for private online focus groups, gaming forums, reader comments and discussion, and standalone web properties.

Grupthink is available today as a hosted, subscription-based service to any organization at http://www.grupthinkpowered.com. A 30-day free trial is available and pricing starts at just $24.99 per month.

Grupthink, Inc was founded in 2006 and is based in Missoula, Montana.

Today we unveiled grupthinkpowered.com! This is the storefront and home page for the Grupthink platform. We’ll be announcing via press releases tomorrow, but I wanted to give you the inside scoop!

At Grupthinkpowered, you can start your own, branded feedback communities based on the Grupthink platform. I encourage you to do so! Afterall, you can try it out for 30 days free!

Why create a Grupthink-powered community? Grupthink makes group discussion more fun, productive, and transparent. There are all kinds of ways to use Grupthink, including simple feedback forums for your website, private online focus groups, and large public communities. For more, check out http://www.grupthinkpowered.com/uses/.

- Steven

A few fixes and tweak are being released today:

• Infinite redirect fixed if answer or topic was just a special character
• Better handling for special characters in AJAX. This fixes the problem with the Euro symbol and other characters.
• Grupthink Administrative:Style updates
• Grupthink Administrative: Ballot images can be generated based on color choices
• Optimized and improved tabs on topic pages and feed
• Various small fixes

This morning we released an update which includes the following:

Grupthink.com

• RSS feeds now supported for all topic lists (Most popular, Busiest, etc..)
• Fixes issue where topic end date could not be removed
• Fixes issue where topic edits by admins were credited to the original authors instead

Grupthink Pro

• WYSIWYG Editing for custom pages, news, and front page message
• Other minor fixes