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SoIndustry Version 2 is live. It’s based on a couple of months of observing beta testers and their reactions to the user experience at launch. What’s different this time?

Firstly, the process of replying to someone else’s status update has been improved - threaded reply submissions are gone. You can still view all replies to a status as a thread (which you can’t do on Twitter, just yet), however, replies are now posted/submitted as @replies (just as they are on Twitter) through the main ‘What Are You Working On?’ boxes on your Dashboard and in your Newsfeeds (which are now known as Channels, but more on that later). This means that you no longer lose sight of a reply as it is posted (as you used to when they were tucked away from timelines and threaded underneath the status update being replied to). Instead, replies are now recorded in the timeline and treated as first class citizens alongside statuses, just as they should be.

@replies also work much better for SoIndustry Channels (previously known as Newsfeeds). Instead of tucking away replies every time they are posted, Channel timelines are now populated with the entire flow of the conversation, rather than a broken down per-topic, disjointed approach. This may sound like a information architecture nightmare, but for the short-form-factor of micro-blogging/status updating, @replies create a much better user experience; the conversation seems to flow more easily because it can be followed by scanning a page, rather than clicking from URL to URL or backtracking to an older thread.

SoIndustry | @replies are here!

Secondly, Newsfeeds have been renamed to Channels. There was, and still is, a good reason for calling what is essentially a group, a Newsfeed (the product roadmap would explain all) - but in the process, the Newsfeed naming convention confused people.

I wanted Newsfeeds to be used as either a chat/discussion channel, a social RSS news reader, or a combo of the two - but their best use case has always been as an easily accessible chat room. Therefore, the ‘Channel’ naming convention, like on IRC, started to feel far more appropriate than ‘Newsfeed’, as the later seemed to convey that they should only be used for news aggregation (as I learnt from watching their usage). Along with @replies and the subsequently improved chatting experience, the Channel naming convention had to come in to play. So, if you’ve ever wanted your very own Twitter like groups but in a clean interface with easy navigation between all your groups, and a Dashboard to pull all these separate groups together , the new SoIndustry Channels should do the trick.

RSS aggregation is still available within Channels (in case you want automated posting of information from other sites) but with SoIndustry version 2 you no longer lose comments from your blog posts because commenting on news items is now only available through Updates in the timeline; SoIndustry enourages users to post comments as part of the Channel conversation, rather than as a threaded comment which really belongs on the original URL, be it a blog post or article on a newspaper site.

I’ve had tons of ideas for Channels that I want to set-up, one being a Ruby/Rails/Web technology group for Warwickshire (it’s hard to find people!), and another being a YCombinator Hacker News Channel (to compliment the news orientated discussion in the forum). Let me know if you want to join either of those. Or, perhaps you have an idea for starting your own Channel, e.g. how does a ‘Design’ channel sponsored by your design consultancy company, and with your company’s banner advertised alongside, sound to you?

SoIndustry | Newsfeeds are gone, Channels are here.

Thirdly, and finally, the interface has been spruced up, at least from a information architecture perspective. Most notably, your joined Newsfeeds/Channels (they are now known as the later - hopefully I’ve made that clear by now) are now accessible in a consistent ’side tabs’ area on the right hand side of the interface. The Tabs enable you to quickly skip between all the Channels you’ve joined, post updates within them, check on the news, etc (all the stuff that makes your SoIndustry experience customised to you) but with only one click between each of your Channels. Of course, you can easily choose which of your Channels should be displayed in your side bar (it’s a checkbox within the respective Channel’s ‘options’ tab).

SoIndustry | The redesign

That’s about it for Version 2. Initial feedback seems to be positive, e.g. a couple of people have said they love the new interface. But what do you think? I’m open to all criticism, so please let me know in the comments. And if you haven’t signed-up yet, what are you waiting for? Start a channel and share it with some contacts.