Hi, we're Hot Potato.

• 2009-12-08

  More updates and the Boxee Beta!

  Thanks to everyone who has been playing with the web application as well as our recently available iPhone app!  The feedback has been great and we look forward to more.  We’re listening and here are some of our more visible updates in response.

  

  You’ll now find that recent comments will display in the stream along with their contents if they are within 15 minutes of the latest message in that event. You can click on the comment to show the message, and other comments on it.

  

  The controls for commenting, liking and sharing a message now appear to the right of the message on mouse-over.  The number of likes a message has received as well as their comments are now displayed beneath a message.

  Perhaps the most exciting news, is that 200 people used Hot Potato during an awesome event put on by Boxee at the Music Hall of Williamsburg last night to launch their new Beta and the Boxee box. You guys created over 500 notes and photos, and provided great perspective from the audience during the event. Check it out here: Boxee Beta Launch. It was a record event for a number of us working in the social media space - Foursquare reported well over 200 people checked into the venue as well.

  

  Suffice to say, with about 72 hours under our belt with the iPhone app now, we’re happy to see so many using it. If you haven’t tried it out yet - get it here: http://bit.ly/hotpotatoapp

  It’s a lot more fun with a few friends, so bring them along to your next event, be it a birthday party, a concert, or anything that a group might be interested in.

• 2009-12-05

  We're live in the App Store!

  Great news - the Hot Potato app is live. Thanks very much to Apple for the approval.

  You can download it here or can search for hotpotato in iTunes.

  Lots more detail coming on this over the weekend, and we haven’t forgotten those who have signed up for an email. We’re working on on the web that will make things easier to use and understand for all of our new users.

  Thanks again for all of your support!

• 2009-11-23

  Tweaks!

  With launch barely behind us, we’ve started in on some fixes, updates and optimizations, as promised.  Today was a busy day.

  A few people mentioned that the color scheme made areas of the site difficult to read.  I suggested we buy everyone new monitors and have them all calibrated exactly to ensure all the subtle nuances of our palette could be appreciated.  Sadly, someone pointed out that our investors probably wouldn’t appreciate that. Instead, we’ve updated elements of the design to be more forgiving.

  We updated the sort order for events in an effort to improve discoverability.  The intent is to help you find the most interesting events currently happening.  Hopefully we’re now just a little bit closer.

  We have also included improvements to how you share messages in the stream to Twitter and Facebook.  Getting your friends in on the fun has become even easier.

  There were also some tweaks behind the scenes that should make things more responsive.  That was today.  Imagine what we’ll have tomorrow.

  The iPhone app… we’re looking forward to you playing with it and while we can’t control the process, we are deeply hopeful that you won’t have to wait much longer.

  We’ve also seen some great events created, like Startup Weekend NYC yesterday.  Keep ‘em coming and if you have any recommendations on how we can improve your experience, please let us know.  Feedback links are on the site and you can find us on twitter at @HotPotatoHQ.

  -Saadiq

• 2009-11-22

  Hot Potato Launch

  Friday was really exciting for the whole team at Hot Potato. We launched at the Techcrunch Realtime CrunchUp and got some nice coverage from Techcrunch, Silicon Alley Insider, and VentureBeat, amongst others. We’d like to thank everyone for their support and kind words. Perhaps most importantly, we’d like to emphasize that hotpotato.com (and our forthcoming iPhone application) represent version 0 of Hot Potato and we’re already hard at work making both incremental improvements to hotpotato.com and the iPhone app. We really appreciate your feedback (there’s a nice thread running here: http://htp.to/7zXYEW ). You can reach us by clicking the support link on the side of the page anywhere on hotpotato.com. We’re also @HotPotatoHQ on Twitter.

  In the spirit of transparency, our focus over the next 24 hours or so is in the following categories:

  - Making sure the iPhone app is available ASAP (it’s in Apple’s hands - and they’ve been very supportive and positive, so we hope its coming soon!)

  - Bug fixes and usability/cross-browser fixes

  - Making it easier to find the most real-time discussion and see what your friends are doing on hotpotato.com

  - Making it easier to tell your friends what you’re doing and ask them to join you. Talking to yourself isn’t any fun.

  We’re really excited to see what you all end up using Hot Potato for. Any event that more than a few people that are interested is a great opportunity to try it out. You can even use it to document a personal experience that you might like to share with your friends as its happening. On the other end of the spectrum, we’re looking forward to connecting many groups of friends around larger events like sports and concerts.

  Thanks again for your support from the entire team of us (Jace, Jeremy, Lincoln, and Saadiq).

  -Justin Shaffer

  justin at hotpotato dot com

• 2009-10-23

  Tap tap.. is this thing on?

  Thanks for coming by. We’ll be posting regularly once we get launched, but in the meantime we thought we’d at least say hello.