February was a busy month for PortalPanel. We implemented quite a few system-wide improvements and some new additions: from link ordering to simplified bookmarking to social widgets, PortalPanel became more flexible more robust and overall more mature app. We grew, and we grew up at the same time.
March brought one major improvement; it relates to the way PortalPanel scans thumbnail pictures. The new process is based on a commercial license and is about six to eight times faster and almost 100% accurate. Most saved links now result in a neatly generated thumbnail picture. (Tip: For old links that failed to generate a thumbnail before, open them up in PortalPanel and rescan. This action should result in a thumbnail picture. For new links, saving them in PortalPanel most likely will generate a thumbnail and the process is going to be a lot faster.)
Even though this was the only major update, March was just as busy as previous months, but more so in terms of data analysis and strategic planning. We took a deep look at who our users were and how they utilized our free app. The goal was to understand our app (not to intrude our users’ privacy!). The results confirmed our hunch and we accepted it as a sign that PortalPanel is on a right track.
Most members of PortalPanel use it to bookmark their web finds; links that lead to the content that is new to them (as opposed to frequently visited websites). These links are stored for later retrieval; oftentimes, users are clearly doing a research about a topic or a project. This is where browser bookmarking capabilities are very limited; from poor visualization to rigid organizational structure, browsers are not capable of providing an enjoyable experience for such a type of bookmarking; PortalPanel is and it delivers.
Interestingly enough, an absolute majority of members also have a set of bookmarked links (approximately 4-10 of them) that they visit very often. These are popular websites like YouTube, news outlets like BBC or CNN and services like Netflix. All they have to do is keep visiting these websites from their browser—It will remember their habits and will provide them with suggestions via autocomplete; and yet so many PortalPanel members (almost 80%) have links of this particular type bookmarked utilizing the app.
These findings indicate a few things. First, there’s a clear trend to use PortalPanel as a homepage. Secondly, users don’t mind spending time logged in into their account, even though, frankly speaking, there’s not that much to do there, especially if compared with social media portals.
Based on these findings, we’re going to continue working towards the goal of engaging our users more and giving them more stuff to do, so to speak. We know you love PortalPanel and you don’t mind spending time on it. We’re excited to know this and promise to work hard in order to deliver more integration with other services, more interaction, and more value for your money--oh, wait--PortalPanel is free!
At the same time, we have no plans of copying social bookmarking sites (the common sickness these days is oversharing fatigue--don't want to spread or get that), nor do we want to limit ourselves to serving academia only by sticking to research and content curation. Most importantly, there are no plans to pepper our homepage with Adsense links or any other aggressive monetization tools.
As always, thank you for Portal-Panelin’ with us. Happy Passover, Happy Easter, Happy Spring!
