Radar Blog
February 24, 2010
John Poisson
Comments (21)
As many of you know, last fall Tiny Pictures was acquired by Shutterfly, long-time innovators in the experience-sharing business. It's a remarkable company with great products, and we're very happy to be a part of the team.
Our mission at Shutterfly is to develop new and innovative products, bringing all that we know about mobile and social media to the mix. Our first effort together is Wink, launched at the end of last year, and we're hard at work on more.
Today I'm writing to let you know that we've decided to wind down the Radar service to allow us to concentrate on Wink and the many other things we hope to do at Shutterfly.
A bit of history
Nearly five years ago--back when Flickr was still in its infancy, and Facebook was on just a few college campuses--we founded Tiny Pictures with a view to helping people share experiences as they happen.
Radar was born a short time later, and focused on delivering a real-time, mobile stream of pictures and conversation shared by you and your friends on any phone...long before the iPhone made this a far easier experience to develop.
From the beginning, the pictures shared on Radar weren't necessarily "photographs" as such, especially when cameraphone quality was laughably poor. More often than not they were a way of sharing a status update with your friends, or 'checking in' somewhere, or somehow conveying more than just the content of the picture.
This highly personal sharing model was precisely what made Radar tick, but ultimately proved to make the service difficult to grow fast enough. And while Radar survived--and often thrived--it's not sufficiently large to be self-sustaining.
Today, this notion of real-time sharing is flourishing in services like Facebook and Twitter and newcomers like Foursquare, and while there's nothing out there quite like Radar we're gratified to have contributed what we have to the birth of mobile through these past few years.
Winding down Radar
We're taking a few steps immediately to ensure a smooth wind-down of the service, but rest assured that we'll give you time to transition. Here's how things will play out:
Today we're disabling account creation on the service and removing the iPhone app from the app store.
On April 14 we will disable posting to Radar, but you'll still be able to browse and comment. At that time we will provide you the option to transfer all your Radar photos to a Shutterfly account. This will give you the opportunity to preserve your content however you choose: create a photobook, use Wink to create photostrips of your favorite moments, or order a DVD archive of all your photos.
On April 30 here we will officially shut down Radar, and do a slow clap for everything we've experienced with you along the way.
If you have any questions or concerns about these details, please don't hesitate to email us or call the office at 415-513-5998 and ask for me.
Thank you
There are a great many people who contributed to Radar over the years, and I'd like to take this opportunity to offer my deepest thanks:
Our investors--Reid Hoffman, Joi Ito, Mohr Davidow Ventures and Draper Fisher Jurvetson--who supported this endeavor with as much insight as capital.
Our Ambassadors, who in addition to their official efforts have been a source of inspiration and wisdom and friendship.
The Radar team past and present, who built a best of breed experience in a complex ecosystem, and who knew how to double down when we needed to and celebrate when we deserved to.
And indeed all our users: the ones we've known since the beginning, and the newest arrivals to the party; the whisperers; the storytellers; the punsters; the parents; and the many strangers that became friends along the way.
Thank you all.
June 30, 2009
John Poisson
Comments (6)
We have some unfortunate news to share today. In order to refocus the company's efforts--on Radar and on several new initiatives--we've had to say goodbye to several members of our team today, including a few people many of you have come to know personally in the Radar community. I know you'll join me in wishing them well.
These changes are never easy, but we remain excited about the future we're crafting here. We're hard at work adding new functionality to Radar and focusing on some big Tiny parternships. We'll continue to keep you all updated.
Thank you.
June 19, 2009
Ian Jeffrey
Comments (4)
Summer in the Bay Area will be here shortly and with it will come BBQ season, so we've asked ourselves: "What better occasion then a summer BBQ to meet-up with local Radar fans?"
So we're pulling out the grill and the charcoal, we're stocking up on burgers and hotdogs, and gearing up for 'darBQ 09.'
On July 18th, join local Radar addicts and the Radar team for good food, fun games, and a few cold ones around the grill. We'll provide the grub, the beverages and everything else, you bring your friends and your cameraphone.
Meet us at Speedway Meadow in Golden Gate Park on July 18th from 12 PM to 5 PM.
Please be sure to RSVP on Facebook or Upcoming to help us plan accordingly.
Who: You and your friends, the Radar team and Ray
When: Saturday, July 18th from 12 PM to 5 PM
Where: Speedway Meadow, Golden Gate Park - San Francisco.
Directions: Enter Golden Gate Park at 25th and Fulton. Continue on 25th and take a soft right onto Transverse Drive. Speedway meadow will be on your right hand side. Be on the lookout for Ray.
June 6, 2009
Ian Jeffrey
Comments (2)
June 2, 2009
John Poisson
Comments (1)
We're seeing some occasional issues with the site right now, and we're having a look. Thanks for hanging in there.
May 19, 2009
Ian Jeffrey
Comments (0)
We receive a ton of requests for the Radar t-shirts, hoodies and other gear you've seen around, so we've decided to open up the Radar Shop.
Have a look around, and show you're down with the brown.
May 13, 2009
John Poisson
Comments (6)
For many of you, Radar has always been a way to privately share with close friends; this is where we started when we first built the service. In parallel, we're seeing more and more interest from people looking to share publicly, be a part of the growing Radar community, and even build a large audience for the things they're sharing.
In order to allow both to thrive, we've changed the way accounts and relationships work in Radar.
Public and Protected accounts
For those of you who want to share privately, we're introducing Protected accounts. You control who can see your posts, and they don't appear in any of the community areas of the service. You can still mark individual posts Public if you want them to be shared on Facebook and Twitter. If you're already a Radar user and have not changed your posting preferences to Public, you now have a Protected account.
We're also introducing Public accounts for people who want to share most of their posts publicly, both in the Radar community and on Facebook and Twitter. If you have a public account you can still share individual posts with select friends. If you previously switched your posting preferences to Public, you now have a Public account.
You can review and change your account type at any time.
'Following' replaces 'Friending'
We've moved to a 'follow' model in Radar. Here's how it works:
If I go to your profile or one of your posts, I'll see a Follow button. If you have a Public account, I can click the Follow button to instantly add you to My Radar. You'll get an alert that I'm following you, along with a button to follow me if you choose.
If your account is Protected, the Follow requires your approval: you can either Accept or Ignore my request. And again, you'll have the opportunity to Follow me back, but only if you want to.
This means we're preserving that explicit 'friend request' idea so important for private sharing, but making it far easier for people to get started on Radar, to discover new people across the community, and to do things with Radar that we never expected.
You'll notice a host of interface improvements to Radar to support these new features, most notably on the desktop site. We cleaned up Profiles and the navigation bar on the left of the page, and improved the visibility of Alerts, too.
Featured People and Posts
To highlight some of the people that make the Radar community what it is, we updated Explore and renamed it Featured.
Have a look around: you'll find photographers and accidental artists; some highly personal reportage; and a few of the Radar mavens who constantly reinvent our service. You'll also find various members of the Radar team.
What else?
While we were at it we worked in some features that many of you (and all of us) have been clamoring for:
Mention alerts: When someone mentions you in a comment or post title, you'll now get an Alert within Radar, not just an email or text message.
Favorites: Mark anyone you follow as a Favorite, and use the Favorites filter to view only posts from these people. You can also mark Flickr contacts and Gallery channels as Favorites if you like. If you're following a lot of people, you've been looking for this feature.
Block: From time to time on any community service you come across someone who you wish you hadn't. We have a team here to deal with such things, but now you have the ability to immediately block someone yourself. (This replaces the Report This User feature; we immediately look into anyone who has been blocked by multiple people.)
The hairy details
The entirety of the Radar service is a complex beast comprising many platforms. Some of the platforms we support--the mobile applications in particular--require third party involvement before what we build gets in your hands. Today we released all of this on the desktop and mobile sites, and the other pieces will fall into place in the coming days and weeks:
iPhone: An updated Radar app for iPhone is being delivered to Apple for approval. In roughly a week, it will be available in the app store, and will give you access to all these features directly from the app. Hang tight, iPhone users.
BlackBerry: In the next few days we will release an update to the Radar app for BlackBerry. In the mean time your current app should work fine, but you should visit the desktop or mobile site to access these new features. The new BlackBerry app will include Profiles, Featured Users, Alerts and everything else you've been waiting for.
Other mobile apps:The Radar app for Java, Windows Mobile and Sidekick will be updated over the next several weeks, depending on where you discovered and downloaded the application. As with BlackBerry, this update will bring these applications up to speed with all the new features.
We appreciate your patience as we synchronize all these moving parts. If you have trouble with your mobile application during this period, let us know and remember you can always fall back on the mobile site until your app is updated.
Enjoy all this, and definitely keep the feedback coming.
May 12, 2009
John Poisson
Comments (18)
UPDATE: we're ~just about there everyone. thanks for being patient.
We're launching some major changes to Radar, and we need to take the service offline for a little while to complete the rollout.
You should expect that Radar will be unavailable until 9pm San Francisco time today, May 13. The upgrade might take less time to complete, or could run a bit longer (it's a big one!) but we'll keep you updated here.
(As always, if you send us any pictures while the service is offline, they will post as soon as Radar is back.)
Hang tight -- we think you'll be pleased with the results.