GigPark Blog

So your friend recommends a photographer … good to know. Would it help to know that 25 others also recommend this same photographer?  We thought so.

So now, every recommendation says how many other people recommend that same person and links to their business page.

Special thanks to two of our members, Keltie and Jackie, for suggesting this feature. If you have a great idea for improving GigPark please send it our way!

GigPark has been growing fast lately (Yay!). So there is a good chance your friends have joined and you haven’t found each other yet.

Today we’re launching a feature to make finding your friends on GigPark about as easy as, well… lets just say it’s very easy. Facebook users can now find all of their friends on GigPark with one click. No adding applications or 3 step processes - just click for friends!

Of course people who use Gmail, Yahoo Mail, Hotmail and anyone with an address book can find their friends too… but not as quickly as you lucky Facebook users :)

Happy friending!

I’ll recommend 3 services to my friends using our regular recommend page.

Now you try recommending a gardener, a babysitter and a tattoo artist to your friends using our new “multi recommend” page. 

You win!

You can get to “multi recommend” by clicking the “Recommend lots of people, quickly” link on the side of the recommend page.

Happy recommending everyone!

PS - If you have ideas for other ways we can make recommending easier, please let me know.

Photo by Tim PopUp.

Do you know how when you ask your friends on GigPark for a recommendation, you often get a lot of replies really quickly?  Well, we’ve now made it super easy to post a thank you message to all of those people.

Being a mensch has never been easier.

So, you’re looking for a real estate lawyer and you’ve asked your friends on GigPark. Great. But what about your (not-so-cool) friends who aren’t on GigPark yet? Maybe they have a recommendation for you?

While you probably already know that you can share a recommendation or request on Facebook, we’ve just launched a feature that lets you easily broadcast any recommendation or request to Twitter and your blog too. Just look for the share icon (an open hand).

And since this works for ANY recommendation or request, it’s now easier than ever to spread the word to help out a friend in need or give props to the auto spa that makes your friends’ cars pretty.

Have you ever recommended someone to friends and then wondered if anything ever came of it?

Last week, I bumped into a friend who thanked me for recommending John, my landscaper, to him. It was nice to hear but I only found out because we happened to bump into each other. A few days later, John told me he’s had a handful of people call him as a result of that recommendation. Again, I was pleased but I had had no idea.

So, as of today, GigPark has made it easy for you to thank your friends for a recommendation and tell them if you contacted and/or hired them. On the flip side, you should be thanked more often (and rightfully so!) for your helpful recommendations.

Try it out – you can do it with one click on the right hand side of any recommendation page. And let us know what you think (we like hearing feedback too).

P.S. It’s never too late to thank people for previous recommendations. Make sure to go back to the recommendations you liked or used in the past and tell the recommender how much you appreciate it.

We’ve been lucky enough to receive lots of great suggestions from our members over the last couple of months… requests for new GigPark features, design ideas and lots of little improvements that we hadn’t thought of - thanks so much!

With these suggestions ringing in our ears we decided to redesign GigPark and I’m happy to say that our shiny new site is now live!

Here’s what’s new…

1. One page to rule them all
We’ve put everything you need on one simple page, called My GigPark. Now discovering the reliable mechanic your friends use or recommending your helpful mortgage broker should be easier than ever. Your GigPark includes content from you, your friends and friends of friends - for lots of members, this means access to hundreds of recommendations by people you know and trust!

2. Friends can use your GigPark too (without joining)
Many of you told us you’d like an easy way to help friends not on GigPark yet. So, now you can share your entire GigPark. Friends don’t need to be members - they can just show up and start searching for that trusted family doctor they’re looking for.

3. Finding and inviting friends is a snap
GigPark gets really useful when you have friends using it, so we’ve made finding and inviting friends super fast and easy. You can automatically find contacts from your email service (like Gmail or Outlook) or add our Facebook app to find all of your Facebook friends on GigPark.

The new design also includes more of those lovely illustrations you’ve told us you like so much (we do too!) and literally hundreds of other little improvements. We’d love to hear what you think! Please leave a comment or drop us a line.

There was lots of excitement at GigPark HQ last week when we found out we had been selected to demo at Toronto’s Mesh Conference.

Mesh is an event all about digital culture and its impact on business, media and society. We’re lucky enough to be part of the 15 Minutes of Fame session where 6 promising startups get to show their wares to the crowd. If you are planning on coming to Mesh, please stop by to check out our demo. We’ll be in the main room between 11:40am and noon on Wednesday, May 21st.

Please also take the chance to grab Noah or I and tell us what you think of GigPark. We’re always excited to hear ideas about how we can improve the service for you!

One last thing: I’m also lucky enough to be on a panel at Mesh. I’ll be discussing “The New Front Page” with Candice Faktor of OurFaves and Daniel Burka of Digg. The panel is hosted by Mathew Ingram of the Globe and Mail.

Sometimes, when a friend is asking for a recommendation, you don’t have the answer but you know someone who does. Now, you can easily pass along this friend’s request for help to other people you know. Just click “Send to friends” on a request and you’ll hook up your friends like a good friend should.

Since officially opening to the public in late February, we’ve had a lot of new people join GigPark (yippee!). There’s a good chance that you know some of these people and that they know you but you haven’t found each other on GigPark yet. With this in mind, our crackerjack team has built a little algorithm to suggest some of these people to you. GigPark members can see their list of suggested friends here.

P.S. Your list of suggested friends gets even better if you check your address book regularly.