Friday, March 7, 2008

Hidden Lives becomes i-confide.com


Dear Hidden Lives community,

We're delighted to be letting you in on a little secret... Hidden Lives is (finally) coming out of beta. And it's got a new name and a bunch of great new features.

The site is now called i-confide and we'll be telling the world about it very soon. The concept however is unchanged.

i-confide is a place to share your innermost thoughts and reflections with the world.

And we wanted to give you - all our early users! - the first opportunity to check out the new site.

http://i-confide.com
(login with your Hidden Lives password).

Explore, confide and check out all the new features such as commenting and favoriting. (For now we'd appreciate if you didn't forward this news onto any blogs or media outlets.) As always we welcome your valuable feedback.

Thanks, and enjoy!

The i-confide team
http://i-confide.com

p.s. make sure you subscribe to the 'showcase' if you want to get the best confides delivered to your inbox.

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FAQ

1. Why did you change the name from Hidden Lives to i-confide?

We had some feedback that suggested the Hidden Lives branding made the site a bit too 'heavy'. Some people thought Hidden Lives only focused on deep, dark secrets and/or skeletons in the closet. The new name of "i-confide" represents a better expression of what the site is all about; sharing your innermost thoughts and reflections. We also want to encourage greater interaction between the people who submit their thoughts and the people who read them. i-confide better illustrates this crucial two-way relationship. Oh, and we like the way "i-confide" sounds when you say it out loud.

2. What's new with i-confide?

Lots. There's greater interaction via commenting and favoriting. And if someone comments or favorites one of your confides, you can get alerted by email. You can also now view the confides in more meaningful ways by seeing the most provocative, obscure, recent and the 'best of' showcase. You can also subscribe to get the showcase delivered to your inbox every week or two. Also you can now upload different images to go with your different confides. And if you don't like any of the existing 'triggers' designed to provoke your reflection, you can invent your own. Can't forget that the site has had a complete re-design not to mention it's been re-developed from the ground up (it's in Ruby for you hackers). Um... there's a few other things which we'll let you discover for yourselves.

3. What about my personal information?

All your personal information and entries submitted to Hidden Lives have been transferred to i-confide. And yes, we're still committed to protecting your anonymity (you choose your username and we never divulge your email). If you want to cancel your account, please get in touch at http://i-confide.com/contact.

4. How do I login to the new i-confide site?

You can use your existing Hidden Lives password to login at http://i-confide.com/login. If you've forgotten your password, follow the link to get a new one. Of course you can always create a new account with a new email address.

5. What's in store for the future?

We're (still) doing this for love not money. The project has always been an experiment in humanity, and an attempt to prove that the web can be a great medium for meaningful and authentic human interactions. So, we'll see where it takes us!

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