Monday, February 16, 2009

Marketplace News Get a Makeover

In addition to quick trade we also released an overhaul of Inkling's marketplace news and announcements features.

Getting traders information from outside sources is an important part of keeping a marketplace lively and active. As a marketplace grows, trader's demands for new information also increases. Instead of making traders spend the time searching for information, administrators were increasingly requesting easier and more powerful ways to bring information directly to the traders to make the marketplace eco-system even more valuable.

Our one allowable RSS feed import and crude marketplace announcements system just wasn't fitting the bill anymore, so we made some changes.

  • Want to import a blog written by the head of your department along with a news feed from Bloomberg, Yahoo, and the Wall Street Journal? No problem! Administrators can now import as many RSS feeds as they want to the marketplace.

  • If importing news from 3rd parties isn't enough, administrators can now write as many announcements as they want.

  • Announcements can be "pinned" to the top of marketplace news so they are readily apparent over a period of time

  • A new marketplace news page aggregates all this information: RSS feeds, custom announcements, and sorts it by time

  • In addition to announcements being made available on the marketplace, administrators can choose to email the announcements directly to all registered users in the marketplace.

  • A new navigational element called "News" has been added to provide immediate access to all this information




We hope you enjoy these changes. As always let us know if you have any suggestions for improvement or new ideas we should consider.

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