Now we know that, because you are the most intelligent community on the Internet, you just did a quick calculation and decided that we must have made a mistake—“Mixx is only, what, 7.5 months old?” you ask. And in a sense, you would be correct. But we actually began building Mixx one year ago; it just took a little time before we were ready to show off our Beta. And because for us it has been a year, we thought a little recap was in order.
Mixx came about because we envisioned a space where people of all different backgrounds and diverse interests could come together to find and share the stories, photos and videos that appealed to them—no editor required. So we poured our hearts and souls (and a lot of hours!) into building Mixx, opened the doors, held our breath, crossed our fingers… You get the idea. And here’s what happened:
You showed up and you kept showing up. You not only showed us that you loved Mixx, but you started helping and you turned out to be the most fantastic set of people we’ve known!
Right away, some of our newly minted Mixxers got together to create the MixxingBowl, a forum where they could discuss all things Mixx—including ideas to make a better Mixx. It wasn’t long before we were introduced to SocialBlend, a weekly podcast also devoted to Mixx and created by Mixxers. Now, we were blown away by both the MixxingBowl and SocialBlend not only because they were devoted to promoting us, but also because they made Mixxers a part of the product process. You told us what you liked, what you didn’t like and the services you wanted. That is how a community works together! Amazing—and a big part of the community spirit we wanted to inspire. But there’s more!
- We’ve seen hundreds of blog posts touting the virtues of Mixx—everything from the simple, clean design to how easy it was to set up and manage YourMixx, not to mention the fact that we work really hard to keep the community engaged and involved in what we’re doing.
- Honest_ape, one of the pithiest cats you’ll ever meet, created SocialMediacrity, an incredibly funny comic strip that updates every Tuesday and Thursday in the MixxingBowl.
- One of the Blenders, Greg Davies (our very own cGt2099), teamed up with Andrew Sorcini (MrBabyman) and they now co-host The Roundup, a weekly podcast about social media content on Mixx and Digg.
Those of you who have been here from the beginning know that our first priority has always been our community because if you’re not happy, we don’t have a very good product or a reason to exist, do we? But it’s always nice to know that the industry thinks we’re pretty cool, too:
- Publishers such as USATODAY, LATimes, CNN, NYTimes, Reuters, NPR, Slate, Weather.com, as well as thousands of blogs, have incorporated us into their pages.
- Great reviews have poured in from Techcrunch, Mashable, CNET, Webware, GigaOM, washingtonpost.com and many more.
A Growing Community
From our launch last October we’ve grown from 31,000 unique users to almost one million today! In May alone Mixx more than doubled in size!
Throughout this growth, users continue to personalize their “YourMixx” pages at an amazing rate; embrace user tags as a way to find and distribute relevant content; and engage in constructive dialogue in comments. We’re also incredibly happy to say that many of the veterans are continuing to reach out to the “noobs” to welcome them to the Mixx.
And this is just the beginning. There’s much more to come, a lot of which you’ll be seeing in the next three weeks or so.
As always, we truly value your insights, comments and suggestions. In fact, this is actually the theme of an upcoming contest—we’re going to challenge you to help us with a little update. We can’t say more right now, so be sure to check back soon—there are some seriously cool prizes at stake.
See you in the Mixx!
Mixxoxoxoxoxoxo
The Mixx Crew
Original Story: Mixx Blog
