Over the past few weeks Shoutreel has gone through some major remodeling and that's probably an understatement! Not only have we changed up the design but we've also introduced one of our main features which is unique to the forum world: VIDEO SHOUTING!

One of Shoutreel's main features - Video Shouting

We'll start out by talking about our brand new feature which we hope will be one of our main features, video shouting. After developing Shoutreel for months on end, we started to think how we can make the forum face more different instead of just introducing it in a web 2.0 fashion. So we went back to the drawing board and voila we came up with this brilliant idea of video shouting. We've been using forums for years and all they offer for the most part is just text. And that's not the most exciting mode of communication out there. In the old school days obviously having video capability on websites was not as easy due to bandwidth limitations.

But now in this day and age we have the capabilities to actually support video communications (obvious examples are the plethora of websites dealing with video). So we put two and two together and a few releases later introduced video shouting. 

With our video shouting feature, we give users the ability to record short video messages and start communications with anyone anywhere in the world. Now we have given forum users a full and real interaction with other people. In addition to video shouting, we still have the ability to have text shouts for the camera shy out there. 

Shoutreel's got some new threads!

Along with the new features we introduced we noticed that our design was just blah! It was lacking that new and fresh look that we wanted that most web 2.0 startup sites are known for. We also wanted to change the design of the site for usability reasons. We wanted to make the site more easier to use.

So we drew up some ideas and the winning one was a multi-column design where the user was able to navigate the site no matter what page they were on. With this design the user wouldn't have to go back to the main homepage to do some action but it was available to them on all pages. 

Once we got the idea down, we tried to design it ourselves in Photoshop, lol. Lesson learned here was if you don't have design skills don't waste your time trying! So we did what we should've done in the first place, hired a designer. Overall the design was exactly what we were looking for, it was elegant, clean, fresh, and just had "that look" that we were imagining in our heads. 

With all the new additions we've added on we're eager to get our user's feedback, comments, suggestions and questions. Please check out the new site and drop us a line on Shoutreel or @shoutreel.

Screenshots of the new goodies:

^Front main homepage

Shoutreel's presentation at Social Matchbox was a BIG HIT!!! :D

We were first up to present in front of a few hundred people. We got interesting questions as well, all that were well addressed. The presentation was ended by tossing out our Shoutreel shirts! It was definitely a great night, awesome experience and superb exposure for Shoutreel.

Social Matchbox also wrote a piece on their blog about us: http://socialmatchbox.com/wp/2010/04/29/shoutreel-team-launches-at-social-matchbox/

You can view the entire presentation here: http://www.shoutreel.com/shouts/Orj4xn

Cheers!

-Shoutreel Team

We got some major updates recently to SHOUTREEL! Here's a long list of what we've been working on the past few weeks and is now LIVE on production:

With this new release we have a lot of new things available:

1. Featured Reels Column - This is a new column on the main SHOUTREEL page that showcases featured reels that are the most active and vibrant. We've added the ability to add avatars to reels, so the reels can now have a face and be more identifiable and more fun. On the main page you should now see a column with some of the hot featured reels.

2. Facebook Connect - SHOUTREEL users can now login with their Facebook accounts using Facebook Connect! You can still shout anonymously without making an account but if you want to login you can do so with the new Facebook connectivity feature. This should make it easier for our users to use SHOUTREEL and access some of additional features available to only registered users.

3. Welcome/Tour Page - We now have a small welcome/tour page that gives a quick overview of SHOUTREEL and explains more about it and what it can be used for.

4. Overall a more clean and solid interface - We've done some cleanup with our user interface and made it more user-friendly and visually appealing.

If you can think of any other ways we can improve SHOUTREEL please drop us a line at http://www.shoutreel.com/shoutreel-feedback or tweet us @shoutreel.

^_^

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