We have some exciting news for you guys! Next time you’re cruising guys on Manhunt, you’ve got a choice – Thumbnail View or List View.
The new Thumbnail View allows you to check out more Manhunt members at a glance, so you don’t have to scroll through page after page to find who you’re looking for. Plus, you can instantly view guys’ ages and locations and then email, IM or unlock for them right from the page you’re browsing.
We know that some of you would rather take your time cruising through profiles – if Thumbnail View gives you too much of a good thing and you’d rather see more complete profile information while browsing, then List View is for you.
You can switch your view whenever you’d like, just click the icons at the top right of the page when you’re looking at search results, Men Online, Buddy List, Track List and Block List.
Log into Manhunt and check out the new view!
Find out more here.
– Team Manhunt
To see how to switch your view, follow the JUMP:
Unfortunately, you’ve just introduced a new bug with this feature: it doesn’t remember the last state of the view, so now I have to click “close” on the pop-up reminder (which pops up each time) and reset it to thumbnail view every time I load my buddy list.
And of course, with the introduction of a new feature, everything gets fucked up.
Do you guys test these features out before going live?
Neil, we had a temporary issue where the database didn’t catch up to store your preference to hide the pop-up reminder. It shouldn’t be happening anymore. If it is, please email me your user name: timmy@manhunt.net
K, I’m not sure what you think is fucked up… some users needed to refresh their cache to see the new view correctly (we’ve since also corrected that particular issue so your cache automatically gets refreshed without having to do anything.) If you’re experiencing additional difficulties, you can contact me. And yes, we do test features before going live! Many of these hiccups are temporary and tend to happen during the increased “load” (if you know what I mean!) of users accessing them for the first time.
Thanks,
Tim
Product Manager, Manhunt
That’s all well and good, Tim, but Buddies Online is not working at the moment. Your testing procedures need to be a lot more rigorous, and you need to do a better job of preparing users for change, not just surprising us with features you think we’ll all just be giddily thrilled about.
I don’t see what’s so hard. All you have to do is listen to our bitc… er, suggestions, and make the site exactly what each user wants it to be without changing anything (because guys hate change), and make it work perfectly right away on all our systems without us having to do anything, and never have any down time or delays. Oh, and also give us all a discount (even the free users) because you screwed us over somehow. What’s so hard about that? Gawd.
(Granted, the above sarcasm might have been a tad more biting if I hadn’t been sitting here for several minutes waiting for the main site to come back online, but I still stand behind it.)
Despite these improvements, Manhunt remains technologically far behind many other social networking sites in both features and ease of use. It certainly creates a business opportunity for a start-up with enough capital to attract a critical mass of customers.
But, honestly, when sites like Facebook, Myspace, and even LifeOut are so profoundly more feature rich than Manhunt, what continues to justify the high price?
chantboy, I’m not sure what about Buddies Online isn’t working.
Let me break out the whole “load testing” speech. And, yes, let me wait a moment for the giggles to finish; because, who doesn’t love a good “load” joke.
Anyways, and this is to Scott’s point, when you’re Facebook, MySpace, etc., you have the luxury of teams of hundreds of developers, engineers, etc. We’re running a slightly smaller ship here, so while we’re able to identify lots of issues during testing, it’s tough to 100% predict what happens in the wild.
Our processes are put in place to ensure that no new changes to the site break existing functionality and that new features work as we’ve described them. And actually, how we describe new features is largely dependent on the user feedback that we get.
For everyone frustrated with the initial hiccups with the release, let me say, first: I feel your pain! As the guy who coordinates the development of the new features with our Marketing staff, Executive Team and Technology gurus, I can speak on ALL of our behalf that if you’re just the least bit peeved at a new feature, we’re all 3000x peeved even worse, since we’re here to truly and honestly bring you kick ass products.
But, back to my original point, we do everything we possibly can to anticipate the tremendous strain on our servers that new features will generate. We do what we can to simulate what would happen to a feature once you hundreds of thousands of guys start using it (sometimes all at once), but there are the occasional bumps in the road as we perform these simulations and tests.
That being said, let me say that we’re moving at a pace more rapidly and more user-centric that we have in YEARS! There are going to be a few bumps in the road ahead, granted… but they’ll be less frequent and the bumps will be less–well, bumpy. Which is bad news if you have a hot porn star sitting on your lap, but good news if you’re trying to keep a site up and running.
So, I invite everyone having problems to let us know the minute something looks fishy! We have a TERRIFIC customer service team who’s here 24x7x365. (Yes, we let them go home; they work in shifts :)) But they’re here to collect your realtime feedback so that we have an accurate picture of what’s going on.
So, until we can grow our team and resources to be similar to Facebook and MySpace, I ask for just a smidge of patience, especially during the first hour or two after a release, as we fine-tune our servers to deliver the best possible performance while serving you brand new features. And, soon enough, these hiccups will be a thing of the past.
I’m always here to listen to your thoughts, praises about my svelte physique, and more importantly, what you think is good/bad/ugly/terrific about the Manhunt site. Email me directly any time. tfeeley@manhunt.net. I’m happy to address any specific concerns I haven’t already and to provide additional insight as I can.
Let me end by saying everyone from our Founders, our CEO, our Executive Team, Marketing Team, Customer Service Team, Technology Team and the other groups within the company who are responsible for keeping Manhunt UP want you to have a great experience and if you’re having anything BUT that experience, let us know: you can call us anytime day or night: 1-866-424-9999 (US+Canada), or +1-617-424-9999 (International), or email support@manhunt.net. All of these venues will get you help anytime day or night. And, of course, feel free to email me as well. Occasionally, I try and leave my desk and have what some commonly refer to as a “life,” but I’m happy to provide help, insight, answers and (if you’re lucky) winning lottery numbers to anyone who wants to send any thoughts my way.
Thanks guys…. you truly are the reason we kick ass. And despite the occasional hiccup, I’m grateful for your loyalty and look forward to brining you lots of smoother transitions into even more new and exciting features in the future.
Xoxo,
Tim
Product Manager, Manhunt