From Friends To Followers

posted on September 7, 2015 by in Insights, News

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In the world of social networks there are two elementary principles on how people connect with each other. The “Friendship-Principle” and the “Follower-Principle”. You know Facebook and yes for sure you know Twitter. By now they are offering almost the same flower bouquet of features, but there is still one big difference: It’s the way people connect with to each other. On Facebook people are friends with one another; on Twitter they are following people they are interested in.

But what’s the difference?

Well, to be friends, both have to “follow” each other. There’s no other choice. But if you follow someone, the other one doesn’t have to follow you back. You follow them and if they want to, they can follow you back … or … not. One big advantage of the “Follower-Principle” is, if you don’t want to get any news from someone anymore, you don’t have to finish your friendship with him. And in the case the other one is also following you, he will carry on following you and also will carry on getting news from you. This gives you much more flexibility on which news you want to get and in which you are not interested anymore.

By the way: Finishing a friendship in the social media world still fells like breaking up a friendship in the real world. Did you ever tried to finish a friendship on Facebook with someone you know? 😉

Tripmii gets the “Follower-Principle”

Since the beginning of Tripmii, Tripmii used the “Friendship-Principle”, but now it’s time to switch to the “Follower-Principle”. The main feature of Tripmii is writing Tripblogs, in other words sharing travel-experinces while travelling the world with other travellers out there or get inspired by other Tripmii travellers’ journeys out there. So it feels much more natural to us to give you more freedom of choice on who to follow and getting news and updates from – rather than having to ask for a friendship first.

Most of the other social media platforms like Instagram or Pinterest are also using the “Follower-Principle”.

What does this mean for you and your friends after we did the switch?

All of your friends, will be your followers and you will follow them back. That’s pretty much the same way as it was before regarding news, updates etc. From that point on you can decide on whom you want to follow and whom not. Find interesting people on an interesting journey and chose to follow them if you’d like to stay updated … it’s not required to know them in the real world! And following definetly won’t feel anywhere close to as akward as asking strangers for a friendship!

Follow people, if you want to receive news & updates; unfollow them, if you don’t want to get updates anymore … and maybe  start following them again later. It’s up to you, it’s that easy!

Another new feature is, that you are now able to block people. We hope, you will never need this, but if you feel someone is getting too personal or anything – e.g. with his/her comments on your pictures, you can block him/her immediately. They won’t get any news, can’t follow you, can’t comment on your pictures anymore and won’t be able to view the pictures you put for followers only.

We think, that this principle fits much better with Tripmii and your interests.
What do you think? Do you have any questions? Leave us a comment!

 

Your TripBlog – The All New Edit Mode

posted on July 6, 2015 by in News, Web

As an user of the Tripmii app you probably already asked yourself, why it’s so much easier to create and edit your TripBlogs using the app, than using the edit mode on the website.

Honestly? This is exactly what we asked ourself! And the good news is … with the latest update, we brought both worlds together. We united three pages to only one single page. No jumping backward and forward anymore. Instant saving of your changes, better performance … and it even looks much better. It’s so easy now to create and handle your TripBlog!  🙂

But the best of all: You probably already know this from our iPhone App … you are now able to publish destination after destination. You don’t have to wait to finish the last destination of your journey till you can publish your TripBlog. Instead publish a destination as soon as it is completed and let your friends and family know how and where you are.

Enjoy your trip!

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It’s Summer Now – Don’t Forget to Blog Your Travel!

posted on June 24, 2015 by in Apps, Travelling

Tripmii is the app that makes it so easy! I would go even further and say Tripmii is the easiest way to get your own travel blog. First of all, the app and the Tripmii web platform is for free! No costs and no ads and freedom for your data. Thats fair … and makes easy to test!

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To create a TripBlog just set a pin at the location where you are. Now you can upload Photos, write a text, maybe give some tips. that’s it! Publish and share that station with your friends. That’s what I call easy!

Do exactly the same at your next stop of the journey and you’ll get a fantastic diary with a mapped route at the end of your whole trip.

It’s summer now! Don’t forget to blog your travel.

Get the App! 

 

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Tripmii, TripStamp & TripCard – When Feature Focused Apps Make Sense

posted on May 25, 2015 by in Insights

Facebook does it with their services and Foursquare does it with their app. There are situations, when you should think about separating your app into two (or even more).

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From The Users Perspective

As a user, I’m really grateful, when I don’t have to navigate through a feature packed app to find one feature I relay want to use. In our case, when I want to send a card, I don’t need all the features the Tripmii App has to offer, I just want to send a card. It’s much easier to just open the app, which is especially made for that.

Nowadays, when every app is sending push notifications all the time and wants access to services like location based service, the user wants to be able to give as fine-grained permissions to apps as possible. With one app, the user can only provide the permission or he can decline it. But with multiple apps the user can easily set several different permissions in the settings of his iPhone for each single app.
You are interested in new stamps, friends are sending you, but you don’t want to get informed, if there is a new trip available? With having two apps, it’s possible to make the settings accordingly.

From The Vendors Perspective

There are a couple of advantages, when separating an app. First of all it’s much easier to promote one outstanding feature, than a couple of probably good features of which the user is only interested in some. Another aspect is, that according of a new study of Microsoft, the attention span of users is now lesser than that of a goldfish. Listing all features of an app can easily overcharge people and they then stop reading. In our case it’s hard to feature TripCards, because all the other features of the Tripmii app pushes the card features into the background.

In the first version of the app, the user could sent cards to his friends. Later we added the possibility to create and to write a whole TripBlog right from the road. Since then, the number of TripCards users sent, declined dramatically. It’s obvious, that the user thinks the app is for writing TripBlogs. “And the app also sends beautiful cards” is difficult to communicate, because it’s a totally different feature.

Tripmii, TripStamp & TripCard

Sure, there are a few drawbacks like having multiple apps on the spring board, but all in all it’s better for both sides to spread features over multiple apps.

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We just made the start with a brand new app called „TripStamp“ which let’s you collect beautiful stamps from your journey. The next app will be called „TripCards“ for sending cards to friends, while travelling. Stay tuned!