My favourite feature has now come to the secretlondon website, you can now upload photos of secrets!
The first thing I did was run out and take some snaps of the lunch stalls at Exmouth Market. I’m hoping others will do the same so we have a site with a catalogue of great photos!
As part of my general enthusiastic photo taking, I also went out to J&A cafe recommended by someone on the secretlondon website and uploaded photos from there on my return. It’s so easy, just find the secret, go to its secret profile page, click the upload button and away you go. It makes the site look so much nicer, and helps people discover these secrets with greater ease! And anything which helps Londoners discover great cake is brilliant in my view! Happy snapping London :)
I’m happy to say that barely a month after it was started, the Secret London Facebook Group has just got its 200,000th member! Thank you so much for everyone who has joined so far, London is talking about secretlondon and it is all down to you.
While London continues to grow steadily, it’s also incredible to see that the ‘secret city’ concept has gone global and the international community continues to grow – which will be the next city to reach 200,000 members?! See http://secretcities.com for a list of some of the secret cities on facebook now.
But secretcities is not just about the number of members, enagagement in the secretlondon group has continued, with thousands of contributions and over 100 discussions started in the last week. We’re soon to be adding new features to the secetcities site that make it open to people who aren’t on Facebook (shock horror!) so we’ll soon be able to welcome more Londoners to share their secrets of the city. Photos are finally working (just!) and we’re beginning to encourage people to explore the new site and tell us how you find it.
Thanks again to everyone who’s helped make this possible, and keep sharing your secrets!
I’ve been questioned many a time about spam control on secretlondon and the honest answer is, until now I have had to watch the page regularly and delete anything I considered spam as it came along. As the facebook page continues to grow (almost reaching 200,000 members!) this ad hoc approach to removing spam isn’t working, and so I am creating a more structured system for tackling the increasing spam problem.
I have instigated a spam rota for the facebook group, every hour of every day there is a ‘duty manager’ watching the facebook group making sure no spam slips through the net. This is why there has been an increase in admins on the group site. On the website, such vigilance won’t be as necessary as we’ll have far better spam monitors in place.
The trickier question is – what do you define as spam? I have written a guide which I will shortly be sharing with the other secret cities Facebook groups to try and answer this. There are grey areas and spammers use lots of tactics to promote themselves — pretending to be a member when suggesting their product or service within a discussion, for instance. Having worked on spam control for a month on the facebook group, I am beginning to understand some of the patterns. One approach of spammers on Facebook is to join the group, post their message and then leave before I can ban them permanently, so they re-join and post the same spam message again
Hopefully, our new methods will work. So watch out spammers, the secretcities spam police will catch you! :)
We’re expanding fast and need an experienced contractor with strong expertise in Django, JQuery and CSS to help us build http://secretcities.com/london. You’ll be working with a small passionate team in EC1 (London, UK). Initial period of 1 month, starting right now!
Email jobs@secretcities.com with your CV, day rate and links to your blog & project work.
Cheers!
Today over 1,000 people visited our new site at its new domain name secretcities.com even though it’s still under construction! I haven’t begun to try to transfer people from facebook to the site as I’m waiting until the site functionality is running a bit more fluidly first.
We’ve now made it so secrets can have longer descriptions, and we’re going to start adding more details to secrets you’ve already suggested (feel free to take part and help us out!) We’re also working on a suggest a secret button now which means you can just come and add a secret that you want to share outside the context of a discussion. So if you are just dying to tell London a secret, soon you can do just that!
Finally, what I’m most excited about is the uploading photos function, photos are second to discussions for popularity on the secretlondon facebook group and once we’ve got them up and running we’ll be able to organise and sort them making sure none get lost as they do on facebook!
So we’re still working away and still gathering feedback and bug reports. Thanks to all 1,000 of you who checked out the website today, it’s really encouraging.
At secretlondon towers we’ve been busy evaluating your feedback on our new site and I am incredibly excited to announce that as a consequence of this we have got a new domain name!
You asked and we listened, we are now secretcities.com.*
The other great thing about our new domain name is that since secretlondon has taken off the secret city movement has gone global! All around the world, people are exchanging and discussing their secrets in Facebook Groups. We want everyone to benefit from the community effort, and so secretcities.com means we can all share one roof! London is live today, and others coming soon. I can’t wait until we’ve got a whole secret world in one place.
I hope you like our new domain name! Thanks for all your feedback—keep it coming!
(*Special thanks to Terra Serve of the Cayman Isles without who this literally wouldn’t have happened :)
In a previous blog I called upon secret city groups to get in touch! I have heard from all around the world; Dubai, Cape Town, Boston, Johannesburg, New York, Sydney and Athens to name just a few. I’ve created a facebook group for us all so we can discuss what best ways we can work together to turn the secrets global. The success of these groups proves there is a global demand for this format of exchanging secrets of cities.
The secret facebook group appears to have a winning formula. Secret Bangalore grew to 300 members in just three days! And Secret Cape Town gained 200 members in one day. It’s so exciting that this secret city trend is born out of London, but we want to take it global and bring you all into the fold. Please get in touch with me if you have a secret city and want to get involved. For now, I am asking secret cities to fill in a spreadsheet which monitors their growth and also how many photos and discussions take place each day. secretlondon’s success is not just the number of people joined, but the way in which they engage so it’s important to see if other cities choose to use the groups in the same way as in London.
So secretcities of the world unite! Email me
Join the feedback discussion on the new website
The site has launched! But we know it is nowhere near perfect, how could it be in the short time we have put it together? So please be patient and let us know of any bugs you come across. We are working round the clock to make it better and need your help to make it happen.
Following the article on techcrunch we have been inundated with feedback, which is fantastic! I wrote a response to some of the comments on techcrunch the summary of which is:
- We’re sorry if you don’t like .us – we thought it was cool because the site was a community project and also lots of domain names had gone :(
- We’re sorry if you think we spent too much money on bagels, we needed to feed all the talented people who worked throughout the night on the site over the weekend.
- We’re also sorry if you felt that we spent too much buying other domains or that it was a waste to do so. But we’re in touch with the secret city groups around the world and they are very excited to get involved.
We are considering all other feedback, in response to one post we are currently rewriting the intro header and are dealing with all bug reports. Please keep the feedback coming, we are really listening and trying to make the site better for you to enjoy.
secretlondon is now live – check it out here!
Please be gentle while we blat the last few bugs…
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