A little milestone: 100,000 items!

We're delighted to have crossed a small milestone today, with the creation of the 100,000th item on The Top 100 website! Thanks to everyone in the community who has contributed all our fantastic content!

Win TheTop100.net T-Shirts & Polos!

We're giving away 100 super-cool T-Shirts & Polos for FREE!!!

Well, y'know, almost free... All you need to do to win one is this:

T-Shirts - the first 100 people to have a Top 100 idea accepted as a Global List will win one of our exclusive front-and-back Tees.

So, along with the kudos of creating a definitive THE Top 100 list, plus mega experience points, you'll own what will surely become a coveted collector's garment...

Polos - our fabulous, high-quality embroidered polo-shirts await any TheTop100.net user who reaches the rank of Turbo Voter ...

To see what you need to do to get to the next level, go to My Top 100 > My Activity!

Congratulations Facebook!

500 million users a month is an extraordinary feat, and a real milestone in Facebook's stated objective of becoming a 'utility' - part of the fabric of our everyday lives.

500 million... if Facebook were a country it would be the third largest on the planet, behind only the gargantuan Chinese and Indian populations, and who's to say that it won't go on to eclipse those super-states too.

There is one aspect about Facebook, though that may yet prove to be its Achille's heel, and that is picked up by the insightful commentator, Aleks Krotoski, in the Guardian's article (full story):

"Facebook faces the risk that people will be unable to partition the different aspects of their lives from all the different "friends" they have there – and that could lead to defections unless the site can find ways to preserve that separation that we keep in real life."

Most people do not have a single group of 'friends', but many social circles, some concentric, some intersecting and others discrete. Connecting and sharing content and opinions is different (means different things, needs to be handled differently) when considering relationships with partners, parents, children, extended family, close friends, acquaintances, work colleagues, clients, employers, and so on. Practically, this means more than just adjusting your 'news feed'. It's how you represent different facets of yourself (husband, daughter, dad, buddy, team-mate, boss, teacher...) to different people, while also retaining your sense of ‘self’ – let’s call that a single user account! Just as importantly, it’s about your opinions: trusted personal recommendation or critique is arguably the greatest influence in selection (from shopping to educational to political choices), but they are also the most telling indicator of one’s personality and should be shared with care.

There is much debate about Facebook’s ‘privacy’ settings – the argument revolves around what personal information should be hidden and what should be revealed to the general public, by default. Would it not be more useful to look at the issue from an angle of self-promotion and publicity, rather than concealment and restriction? After all, it seems we are now all micro-celebrities: never before have so many people been able to tell so many people so much about themselves, and that scale of broadcast needs careful management. Why not have multiple versions of one’s profile (think holiday snaps for your family profile, weekend pics for your friends profile, smart portrait for your business or school profile, sexy pose for your dating profile), and then elect which hat you wish to wear when promoting yourself by connecting, publishing and sharing content and opinions with different people?

In effect, this is what we do in a way, by having accounts with Facebook, LinkedIn, Google, Match.com, etc. and we (laboriously) log in to each service and maintain profiles across multiple sites. The real long-term winner will be the site that brings this all together in one place.

We're delighted to see its success, it’s a tangible indicator that the information age is maturing, but for Facebook to become truly pervasive, and not fade like many promising fore-runners, we believe it will need to shift its architecture towards a more real-life human social model.

New Comments Feature!

Our helpful testers asked us for a quicker, more intuitive way to communicate from within lists, so we've obliged! You'll see comment icons in reviews, images and item facts all across the site, that look like this:

Roll your mouse pointer over the comment icon to reveal the comment pop-up bubble...

You can add comments straight away, as long as you're logged in, and if you check the "Keep me notified" box, you'll receive an email if anyone else adds a comment later. You'll also receive a mail if anyone comments on one of your items.

We've also replaced List Forums (all forum topics have been moved to Group pages) with a comments summary for each list. You can see up to 30 recent comments on any items within the list, with links direct to the item page...

So, if you've got something to say but don't want to write a full review, then just Comment!

World Cup Competition!!

At TheTop100.net we're celebrating the Football World Cup with a great competition on the site. It's fun, FREE to enter, and we're offering some great prizes!!

Predict match results, win points, and win prizes!

All you need to do to take part is click the link below and join the FIFA World Cup 2010 group...

New List Widget!

The List Widget is a great new feature on TheTop100.net, which allows you to grab a copy of any list to display on your blog or website. You can adjust the dimensions and the font size to suit your page, and the widget will update automatically. That means it's always up-to-date with current opinion, and you'll always be displaying the latest Top 100 items!

Best of all, it's totally FREE to use, so if you just want to keep track of your favourites Top 100 Films list, show who's top of The Top 100 Dinner Guests, or display your own Top 100 Products, go and grab a Top 100 List Widget now!

Can't find the perfect Top 100 list to suit your site? Simple, start your own...!

View a quick video demo for getting a List Widget!

How the List Widget Works

We've tried to make things as simple as possible, so on each list page, you'll see a new ListWidget button, floating on the left hand side of the screen:



Click the button to bring up a preview of the List Widget, and then just follow these two simple steps:

1. Adjust the Height, Width and Font Size settings to fit your site or blog. The preview of the widget will update automatically.

2. Click the 'Get the Code!' button to generate the code you need, copy it, and paste it into your site.

That's it, you're done!

sTubbuLon5 checks out the iPad

iPads just went on retail release in the UK so sTubbuLon5, our resident rockstar dev and gadget fiend, went to check them out. And guess what, TheTop100.net looks fab!


In house opinion is divided on whether the iPad and its rapidly growing family of equivalent portable tablets are a must-have addition to one's hi-tech collection, but it didn't stop us starting a new iPad apps list. Give us your opinions, or click through to buy from the iTunes store!

The Top 100 iPad Apps

Rating

TheTop100.net is all about 'collaborative assessment': lots of people working together and giving their views and comparisons on anything and everything.

In a previous post we talked about simple, one-click voting. Here, we'll talk about going one step further in registering your opinion using the rating characteristics.

Ratings

While votes & stances express a view of an item's relative position, Ratings are a more fundamental, subjective assessment of an item's qualities.

Each list has a range of ratings criteria on which you can evaluate each individual item. Because no two Top 100 lists are the same, these criteria are different for every list, allowing a much more detailed and appropriate measure of inherent quality.

Hotels are just not the same as Historical Battles!

You'll find the ratings panel just below the Facts section on a list page, or on the right-hand side on an item page. Next to each rating characteristic you'll see the average score in 'stars' from everyone, as well as your own rating, and then a summary value for both.

(Dennis' tip: hover your mouse pointer over the stars to see exact values)

Submitting a Rating

If you haven't rated an item yet, the My Ratings section will appear blank. Click the 'Rate this' button to enter your ratings, and then click 'Submit'...

(Dennis' tip: the higher overall rating you give the more positive effect it will have on an item's ranking - and vice versa!)

>> View a quick video demo on rating!

Item Pages & Browsing

Most lists on TheTop100.net are made up of Items - e.g. an individual wine, film, artist, or song, etc. Two new features on the site introduce item pages, and quick browsing from one item to the next...

Item Pages

From any Top 100 list, click on an item's name in either the list or the item Facts panel to view the item page:


The item page shows all the available details for that item. As well as facts, you can view ratings, reviews, comments and item history at a glance. All of the normal item tools are fully functional.

Item Browsing

At the top of the item page are two browse buttons. Use these to move quickly from item to item (item #100 will loop back to item #1).

The browse buttons are also located in the Facts panel in the list view. Use the 'Back to List' button to return to the item's parent list.

Alpha becomes Beta!

First and foremost, a big thank you to all our alpha testers who have been giving terrific and invaluable feedback over the last few weeks. We clearly have a diverse wealth of talents in our fledgling community!

After two years in the making, it's a great thrill to have finally crossed the threshold from private alpha to public beta, and switched over to our main domain. There's still much to do, and we'll be adding and refining features over the coming weeks, so please drop by regularly. We hope that visitors have as much fun on the site as we have building it...

The Top 100 Team

Voting

TheTop100.net is all about 'collaborative assessment': lots of people working together and giving their views and comparisons on anything and everything.

The Top 100 ranking analyser gathers this collective opinion and uses it to order items in lists. There are three ways in which you can record your views and thereby influence an item's position: Votes, Ratings and Reviews. In this post, we're going to talk about Voting and associated 'Stances'...

Votes & Stances

The quickest and simplest way to register your view is to use the Voting Buttons that are displayed next to each item in a list. When you vote on an item, this establishes your 'Stance' - that is, your view on whether you think the item should move.

If you think an item is too low in the list, relative to its neighbours, click the Up arrow on the voting buttons to give it a positive influence.

If you think an item is too high in the list, click the Down arrow to give it a negative nudge.

Finally, if you think an item is fairly ranked as it is, you can click the 'Remain' button to indicate that it should hold its position.

(if you have voted accidentally you can clear your stance by clicking the small 'X' to the left of the buttons)

Your stance is saved automatically, so you'll be able to see instantly which items you have voted on in a list whenever you return.


While you can vote any number of times on an item, you only ever have one stance (even if you have a number of 'aliases'), and it is only your stance that influences an item's ranking. Clicking repeatedly will have no effect other than to refresh a stance.

>> View a quick video demo on voting!

Welcome!

TheTop100.net is a brand new web service where you can find The Top 100 list of anything… or if you can’t, you can start your own!

On this blog we’ll publish details of new features and updates, plus information on TheTop100.net and what makes it unique and special. There might be the odd promotion or two as well!

It’s also a useful channel for engaging with our user base, so please feel free to add comments or ask questions.

Posts will be brought to you by Dennis, the site administrator, and The Top 100 team. Dennis gets his name from Project Dennis, which was the early working title for The Top 100. You can find out what Dennis might stand for here: The Top 100 D.E.N.N.I.S. Acronyms.

TheTop100.net is now in Beta and available as a public service!