Tweet this!

Hey, we've just added Twitter integration to thingloop. You can turn it on from your Profile using the checkboxes at the bottom, shown above.

thingloop will update your status periodically to let your friends know when you're adding items, etc. Let us know how you get on with it. Note, you can also use it when you are 'shouting out' and asking people if they can lend you stuff. Maybe one of your followers has the thing you need?

Can anyone lend me a ... ?

We're really pleased to announce that we'll be releasing a new thingloop feature early next week. This has been a frequently requested feature, and we hope you find it really useful.

You can now 'shout out' and ask if anyone has the item you need or want to borrow. The new feature will be available from the Messages view.

We've tried to make it as flexible as we can, so you can message a subset of your contacts, or all or them, update Facebook, and send automated emails (we've put limits on these to avoid people getting spammed by too many messages).

We hope you like it, let us know what you think.

iPhone App
For those wondering about the iPhone app, it is coming. Thanks for your patience!

The app has been submitted to the Apple store. Unfortunately, this can sometimes be a lengthy process, but we hope to have it released soon.

Have a nose around!

We're really happy to announce the release of a frequently requested thingloop feature...

Previously, the Their Stuff view showed all the items from all your friends and groups, mixed together. But we've just released a new feature that allows you to filter this view down to individual friends and lists of friends.

So now you can have a good old nose around, and see exactly what an individual person is sharing with you.

Filter by lists

You can also filter by lists of friends, which is really useful. For instance, if you want to know what your friends nearby have available, you can just place them all in the same list and filter on that.

... from user profiles
This functionality is also available from user profiles, if you're connected to the user.

Enjoy!

Zaptastic!

Awesome, we've got a little Gigantic July treat for some of you. Today we've released the thingloop Zapper, our first mobile phone app for thingloop.

So adding items on thingloop is even easier, it's now as simple as scanning a barcode (for those items that have barcodes!).

The app is available from the Android Marketplace, for all those users with Android powered devices. For those without an Android phone, sorry, you will have to wait a little longer. We are hoping to be able to release an iPhone version of the app shortly.

If feedback is good, we will add functionality to the app soon, so let us know what you think of the idea!

Tag Clouds - helping you find stuff

We've just released a new feature on thingloop, which should make it easier to see what sorts of items your friends have got that you can borrow. It can be a bit crazy once you are connected to a few people and there are hundreds of items that you can see, so this should make it a little easier to manage.

In the My Stuff and Their Stuff views you can now see a clickable representation of the most popular item tags. You can click a tag to add it to the item filter. For instance, clicking on the book tag would show all the items with the book tag.

Tag, what's that?
If you are a bit bamboozled as to what a tag is don't worry. A tag is a word that you would associate with an item, to help other people find it. For instance, for your hammer drill you might tag it as diy tool drill hammer cordless. This would help someone find out quickly what drills people are sharing with them.

Another example might be a romantic comedy DVD, in which case you might tag it as dvd film movie romcom, or something along those lines. This means that if someone is in the mood for a romcom they can just pop the tag in the search box and see what movies there are available, without having to browse through all the action, fantasy, scifi, etc, movies.

Connecting you with your friends

Our team is loving thingloop, in the past couple of weeks we've borrowed/lent a PS3 game, DVDs, books, some dresses, an airbed, a drill and a ladder!

But we're aware that a large number of our new users haven't managed to connect with many of their friends. This means that you're not yet enjoying any of the benefits of thingloop.

We are working hard on features to help you connect with your friends and get sharing. So we're really pleased to announce the release of our new email contact import feature (see the 'Friends' view). This enables you to retrieve your contacts from your email account and choose people to invite to join you on thingloop.

So why not give it a whirl, and let us know how you get on. Spread the word, and increase your loop.

Monumental May
So Monumental May was awesome, we saw a 1000% increase in the number of users, despite falling somewhat short of our £100k total of items.

We are expecting a large increase in the number of items on the site, as people begin connecting with more of their friends and have people to share with! Thanks for your patience and perseverance as we build critical mass.

Find your Facebook friends!

Facebook friends
We've just released our initial integration with Facebook. This enables you to search for your Facebook friends on thingloop.

You may find that your initial search doesn't match many users. However, as your Facebook friends join thingloop we'll be able to match their Facebook and thingloop identities, and inform you of their arrival.

We working hard to add features that will help you connect with your friends on thingloop, as we know this is hampering some users getting sharing.

Follow us on Facebook
You can now follow us on Facebook, as well as Twitter.

Feedback
We also want to say a big thank you for all the feedback we've received so far, and say we really appreciate your patience as we iron out some of the rough edges that exist.

We are using your feedback to help prioritise our todo list, so if you haven't already, then have your say!

User Feedback Feature - let us know what you think!

We're pleased to announce the release of the User Feedback feature. This should make it much easier for you guys to let us know what is and isn't working for you.

So, if you've spotted any problems/glitches, thought of a cool new feature, have a question, or just want to tell us you think it's awesome, then let us know.

We're really keen to get you guys involved to help shape the future of thingloop.

New feature - we're valuing your items, track how much you're saving

We've started placing approximate valuations on thingloop items so that you can:

• See the value of your sharing network, i.e. all the stuff people are sharing with you
  
• Track how much you're saving by borrowing
  
• Track how much people are saving by borrowing from you
  

The new statistics can be viewed by looking at your profile and groups.

Caveats

There are a couple of things that should be noted:

1. The valuations are estimates (see the next section for more info).
   
2. We are not currently able to value manually entered items, only auto-searched items from the web.
   

How are we doing this?

This is the boring bit, so skip it if you're not interested!

Basically, we search for pricing information during web searches, and choose the current lowest price for the item. This means that the estimates will be on the low side, e.g. the average DVD will be valued at maybe around £3 or £4 pounds, unless it's a new release.

Consequently, most of the values provided are on the conservative side, and may undervalue some of your items. We apologise for this, but feel it is better to underestimate than to provide wildly inflated valuations. The figures still provide a good valuation of the activity within your sharing network.

We are hoping to enable valuations of manually entered items in the near future as well. Watch this space.

New feature - sharing with friends!

We've just updated the site to add our latest feature on thingloop - the ability to share with friends and lists of friends, rather than just groups. We're pretty excited as we're aware that the group-centric sharing was too restrictive for many people.

There are a number of other improvements included in this release as well. We hope you like it.