2010: The year of the products

2009 was definitely the year of infrastructure at 37signals. We put in a lot of work behind the scenes to improve our hardware, software, and security setup. We also launched our biggest infrastructure project to date: 37signals ID. Infrastructure improvements are never over — we’ve got at least one big one brewing right now — but 2009 saw big progress on that front.

2010 is going to be the year of our products. With some of the big infrastructure projects behind us, we can focus more of our energy on improving our products. We’ve got some great ideas for new features, integrations, UI design/redesigns, streamlining common flows, etc. We have some new product ideas we may explore as well.

A new way of working

At the heart of the product renaissance is a new way of working. In the past each person at 37s has been pretty isolated. Everyone pretty much worked on their own own project. There was some overlap in a few spots, and occasionally a small team might come together to tackle something big, but most of the time it was every man for themselves.

We also had a tendency to pull people in different directions. We might ask someone to work on A, but then a few days later ask them to pitch in on project B, and then also ask them to help fix bug C. That makes settling into a focused zone really difficult.

In 2010 we’re going to change that. Here’s how:

Yesterday we alluded to a new Sortfolio promotion we’ll be running across The Deck Network. The promotion started yesterday and will run for at least the next 60 days.

How it works

We purchased a slot on The Deck for Sortfolio. That gives us somewhere between 2,500,000 and 3,000,000 ad impressions across over a 30 day period. We used to run a static ad in that spot, but what we’re doing now is splitting the ad display 25% static and 75% dynamic. The dynamic ads feature our Sortfolio Pro customers.

25% static

25% of the time, our ad will look like this:

75% dynamic

75% of the time, our ad will be generated dynamically and feature a Sortfolio Pro listing ($99/month). Currently about 140 companies have Pro listings. The ad will feature a crop of their primary screenshot as well as a link directly to their Sortfolio page. Here are a few examples:

This means the companies paying $99/month to be highlighted on Sortfolio are also getting roughly 15,000 highlighted ad impressions across The Deck Network too.

This means your web design company could get prime exposure on sites like Daring Fireball, A List Apart, 43 Folders, Kottke.org, The Morning News, Ze Frank, Twitteriffic (in app), Design Observer, etc. There are currently 40 high profile sites that run Deck ads.

More exposure = more potential business

We hope this added high-profile exposure leads to more business for your web design firm. If you aren’t listed on Sortfolio yet, get listed today. It’s free to list your company, but if you want have a chance at having a featured ad run across The Deck Network, you’ll need to upgrade to the Pro plan.

Back in mid November we got an email from someone claiming that we were infringing on their “Haystack” trademark. To their credit, the email was kind and calm. No legalese, no pointed cease and desist, nothing harsh — just a “Hey guys, we’ve got a problem here…” email.

They felt our use of Haystack was infringing on their registered Haystack trademark in the “business information services” category.

Over the next few weeks we traded a few emails back and forth. We didn’t agree with their claim, but we didn’t want to get into a protracted legal battle either. Any time you can avoid lawyers is a good time. They agreed.

We discussed purchasing the trademark from them, but we couldn’t agree on a price. So in the end we decided we’d just rename our Haystack service. We were only a few months in, and we’re in this for the long term, so renaming early wouldn’t be a huge deal. We’d cut our losses and move on. The sooner the better.

Sortfolio

So today we announce that Haystack is now called Sortfolio. We kept the haystack.com domain name so the old haystack.com URLs redirect instantly to the new sortfolio.com URLs. No broken URLs, no interruption in service.

Promotion begins again

We poured a lot of promotional effort into Haystack during the first month. Lots of folks have been getting lots of work. Unfortunately we had to go quiet during the trademark negotiations. We didn’t want to promote a name we might have had to change.

Now that we’re back in the clear, and Sortfolio is live, we can begin our promotional campaign again. We’ve got some big stuff planned including a special, innovative promotion we’ll be running on The Deck starting in a few days.

We will also be giving all current paying Sortfolio customers a free month to say we’re sorry for having to pull back on promo for about 45 days. Details on this will be emailed to our paying customers shortly.

Find a designer or get a client

So, if you’re looking for a web designer, or you’re a web designer looking for work, check out Sortfolio today. Continued success to everyone.

Seth Godin asked some people to write a brief essay about what they think matters now. It could be anything. Even just an image if you wanted. Here’s who contributed:

The result: What Matters Now, a free 82-page PDF eBook.

I decided to write about apologizing. Specifically about saying “I’m sorry”. It’s an easy thing to do, but so many companies get it wrong.

Here’s my essay: