Fanzter Blog » Coolspotters

Happy Birthday Coolspotters!!

Aaron LaBerge — Fri, 07 May 2010 15:13:35 +0000

Coolspotters turnes 2 years old today. Head on over to the Coolspotters blog post and leave us a comment. Thanks

Our little baby’s all grows up!

Aaron LaBerge — Tue, 30 Mar 2010 13:15:31 +0000

Today we’re removing the “Beta” tag from Coolspotters and launching a new new features. You can read more about it on our Coolspotters blog post. Enjoy.

Coolspotters Launches New E-Commerce Partnership Program

Aaron LaBerge — Wed, 16 Dec 2009 18:45:47 +0000

Last week Coolspotters launched a new partnership program aimed at celeb-savvy brands who want to reach the perfect audience.

Hello Again

Jon Maddox — Tue, 15 Dec 2009 00:18:52 +0000

It’s been a busy 6 months since I joined Fanzter. Things aren’t slowing down, so I thought I’d finally take a second to introduce myself.

Who Am I?

My name is Jon Maddox, I live in Richmond, Va. I’m a software developer that loves building great products. You can find a little more about me here, you can Google me, or follow me at Twitter and GitHub. For now, lets talk about something that’s actually interesting….like why I’m at Fanzter and what I’ll be doing.

Why Am I Here?

I am currently the VP of Technology and Product Development for Fanzter. I joined Fanzter through the acquisition of my previous company, Mustache, Inc. So why am I here? Well, in all my years of using/playing with/developing technology, I’ve come to have pretty high standards and taste. I know what’s good and I know what’s not-so-good. In a nutshell, I know what sucks. And the inverse of that, I know what’s awesome — the work Fanzter is doing is AWESOME. So my role here is to help them finish their current product roadmaps and help invent future products. So while I’ll still be developing, I’ll also be making some pretty crucial decisions on our product roadmaps.

Coolspotters.com was already a really amazing product before I joined the team. I wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t. But, the beauty of Coolspotters is, that it’s a rooted product that has the ability to scale out in a million different directions. The hardest part is to control those directions. So one thing I’ll be doing is helping to determine which of those directions we actually act on, and in what order. All of those decisions will be based on 3 things:

Time to Develop / Value – The old ‘low hanging fruit’ plan. Being a small team, we have to pick and choose our next gen features wisely. The last thing we want to do is spend months on a feature that lends nothing to the entire site. It’s important that we we balance how awesome a feature will be for users with the length of time it will take to develop.
Does it make Coolspotters easier to use? – Coolspotters is a pretty massive site. If time isn’t taken to examine a feature closely, it’d be super easy to junk it up. It’s important to make sure each new feature fits into the flow of Coolspotters easily. Anyone can add feature after feature. But without a clear understanding and fit for that feature, you end up with super bloat. We want to make Coolspotters as user friendly to browse as we can.
Does it make Coolspotters’ data more expressive? – Coolspotters hosts an enormous amount of data. Awesome data. This has the potential to get you lost pretty easily. It’s important for us that Coolspotters data is understandable and obvious. Any new feature has to improve this usability, not make it more hectic.

Etc.

During all of this, I’m also working on some pretty awesome internal tools, and a iPhone app here and there, that help the Fanzter family of products become even better. But more on that later…

2nd Annual Coolspotters Holiday Gift Guide

Aaron LaBerge — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 15:09:48 +0000

We just launched the 2009 Coolspotters Holiday Gift Guide. Full of only the very best and very latest products in the world today, we hope you’ll take advantage of it during this busy holiday season. It was designed to make it easier for you to find the perfect gift for the fashionistas, the entertainment lovers, the gadget buffs, the sports enthusiasts, and just about everyone else, in your life.

Check it out and have a Happy Thanksgiving!

Coolspotters is one of the Top 100 Websites of 2009

Eric Kirsten — Thu, 06 Aug 2009 19:40:48 +0000

Launched just over a year ago, Coolspotters has grown to be the definitive source for the products and brands used by today’s biggest celebrities. All of us at Fanzter have been very excited about this growth, and we work every day to ensure that our community is empowered to share, discover, and interact around everything they’re passionate about – in a way not found anywhere else on the web.

Recently though, we took a breather to appreciate an incredible honor presented to us by the editors at PC Magazine, who named Coolspotters as one of their “Top 100 Websites of 2009“.

We greatly appreciate being considered, but we promise not to slow down! Keep an eye out for some exciting releases and developments coming this fall! Thanks again for the award, PC Mag, and a huge ‘thank you’ to the incredible community of users we have on Coolspotters!

-Eric

Coolspotters and Newsweek

Aaron LaBerge — Wed, 11 Mar 2009 13:48:42 +0000

Today, we announced that Fanzter and Newsweek have formed a partnership which has Coolspotters powering content modules on Newsweek.com. We’re incredibly excited about this.

Hop on over to Newsweek and check it out.

-Aaron

If you’re interested, here’s the official press release about the partnership.

You like me, you really like me!

Aaron LaBerge — Thu, 18 Dec 2008 21:52:29 +0000

Coolspotters won the Open Web Award for Best Fashion Application

The 2nd Annual Open Web Awards is a multilingual, international online voting competition that covers major innovations in web technology and honors the top achievements of websites and services in 26 categories. Other winners include Twitter, Digg, Youtube, Flickr, and Wikipedia. This year there were over 50,000 nominations, and almost 200,000 votes.

We are incredibly proud because, in addition to the People’s Choice award, we also won the Blogger’s Choice award. We would like to thank everyone that nominated and voted for us. We couldn’t have done it without you!!

So as we end 2008 on a high note, we wish everyone a very happy and joyous holiday season!

See you in 2009.

The Coolspotters Holiday Gift Guide has arrived

Eric Kirsten — Thu, 27 Nov 2008 06:43:13 +0000

Hard to believe another year has come and (almost) gone. It’s been a great one for Fanzter in so many ways. But as we head into the heart of the holiday season, now is not the time for reflection; now is the time for finding perfect gifts for the special people in our lives. It is officially shopping season.

We’re very proud to announce our first Coolspotters Holiday Gift Guide. Featuring our most popular product categories, the Guide offers our top individual product selections for 2008. There’s a reason our final picks are popular with not only celebrities and public figures, but with the entire Coolspotters community. Very simply, we believe they’re the best. So check it out and see for yourself! The Coolspotters Gift Guide has arrived!

Happy Thanksgiving,
Eric

Introducing The Official Coolspotters Blog!

Eric Kirsten — Fri, 25 Jul 2008 22:56:45 +0000

We launched Coolspotters about 10 weeks ago. Since then we’ve been listening to all of your great feedback and new ideas. But since communication is better as a two-way street, we decided to launch the official Coolspotters blog. We’re going to use this blog to share upcoming Coolspotters features, the latest on our community, and other new developments. Check it out, and please keep your ideas and suggestions coming!

The Fanzter blog will now be used exclusively for company-related communication. For those of you reading this blog for Coolspotters info, please make sure to add our new feed.

Thanks,
Eric