August 2014 - Experts123 Community Update

Major changes happening - Full Details here - http://www.experts123.com/Write/vXbwT6hmp3U

Highlights:

1. Better community channels and involvement.  All new development going forward is based on community member feedback.  If you need a feature, then let us know and then get involved on voting on the upcoming features.  Monthly updates will be provided.
   
   ***Also, we are seeking your input for our coop model going forward.  As we grow this community, we are looking to pay out any advertising and membership fees mostly to the community members that contribute the most.  (If you create great expert content, manage topics, and market the site, we all want those actions to be rewarded fairly to the community.)
2. Monetizing Value.  In order to make a self sustaining community, we are adding paid features and reviewing specialized advertising and transactional services where validated experts can provide paid services to the community.  (See further details to vote on here - http://www.experts123.com/Write/vXbwT6hmp3U)
   
   We also want to reward you for sharing content and the community with others.
3. Expertise Measurement - Expertise Points - Expertise Levels.   We already have enabled expertise points.  The community users needed tools to measure their levels of expertise so we came up with Expertise Points and Levels. - Provide further input by commenting on this article - http://www.experts123.com/Write/vXbwT6hmp3U

Major features just launched in August:

1. Improved Article Writing - http://www.experts123.com/Write - We have worked really hard to make it so easy to publish content in your area of expertise.
2. Draft Sharing and Commenting.

Experts123 Recent and Upcoming Site Changes

Hi Experts123 Community!

We hope you are having a great week and having fun sharing your expertise and making the world a better place.

Here are some new changes released last week:
- Redesigned sign-up lightbox 
- Redesigned homepage
- Improved Questions page layout
- Improving Related Questions 

Coming in August 2014
- New tools for Article Writing
- Draft Articles and Article Sharing


Other Features in Progress:
- Working on additions to the Expertise points system where you can show off your expertise even more with Article and Question Answering Expertise
- Functionality where you acquire more expertise reputation allows you to take on more responsibility and demonstrate your expertise further to constituents.




Keep sending us your ideas.  We love all the input and are working hard on making this an amazing engaging experience for you to share, learn, and earn.

Happy 2014!

Happy New Year everyone!  We are really looking forward to 2014 and some of the new features and programs we are planning to introduce to help you seek expertise and knowledge better.

It was a great year and we made some key improvements to the core platform over 2013 including:
-Removing SPAM
-Enhanced Nominations
-More robust Topics
-Expertise Points (more enhancements coming soon!) - Now you can contribute and demonstrate your expertise in specific topics.


In 2014 we plan to change the contributor program to make it better for all the wonderful contributors making a difference everyday.  Contributors at certain levels will also be able to offer additional services.  Initially the Writers Desk and Article creation will become much more simple in January as we improve those programs and features.

We look forward to your suggestions so keep sending them in so we can make a better community for everyone.

Experts123 Interface Changes and New Voting.

We are happy today to release new functionality to vote on content on the site.  Okay, sure its not completely revolutionary to everyone but its moving us all in the right direction.  We wanted to make the community control pretty much everything throughout the site.  Part of making that happen was allowing have feedback to everyone involved when content is good and when it needs improvement.  So in true democratic fashion we changed the functionality to provide up and down votes for all pieces of content on the site.

So if an article, question, answer is well written and useful then ... Vote it up.

If its poorly written and/or not useful then let everyone know and Vote it down.

Content that is voted up more gets more exposure and content that is voted down gets less exposure.  The community pretty much controls how the knowledge network distributes the content.

***Use the Comments for Suggestions to the Content as well.

You will also notice we changed the engagement functionality to more easily share content with others.  We added easier ways to do social shares with twitter, facebook, and google+.

Let us know what you think!

Experts123 - Happy June 2013 Update

This has been a really crazy year so far for us at Experts123.  We had a lot of initiatives planned and now we are making some traction and pushing out new features that will help you manage knowledge better.  We now have released the functionality to favorite content on the site so that it shows up in your profile.  Now you can go to your profile and always come back to your favorite articles and questions.

For me personally at the end of 2012 my Grandmother passed away.  She was the last of my grandparents and she lived a wonderfully full life.  Still it was hard to let her go.  What I've found in life though and I'm still learning is that in order to move ahead and grow oftentimes you have to let things go.

What does all this have to do with Experts123.  Well, Experts123 is a life journey and a passion for all of us really involved with it.  Its about creating a collaborative knowledge community that makes the world better.  Its about empowering people with knowledge sharing tools and making it easier to just get things done.

We realized that we needed to give things up that were not working for users and the site.  That's why today we updated the interface and removed features like Polls and the Experts Search.

The reality is we rushed these features out to meet different needs and they were not operating effectively and providing real value.  You will see a new Experts and Expertise Search coming soon.  

At Experts123 we believe that "helping others helps change the world for the better" Let us know how we can improve.

Frank and the Experts123 Team.