Gapers Block has a great piece on Hanson, the band.

Hanson is a great case study for the music business and the business business. They’re a group of guys — brothers, no less — who love what they do and don’t care what you think. They’ve built a deeply loyal fan base, they’ve built a great business, and they’ve been able to mobilize their fans to support causes that the band — and their fans — believe in.

And they’ve done all this after being written off and largely ignored.

What I found most impressive about the story is how dedicated they are to their community. They are part of the community, not just facilitators of the community. For example, to promote charity, and their “Walk Around the World” tour, they are walking a mile with their fans before each show. For each mile walked, the band donates one dollar on the walker’s behalf to one of five causes the walker can choose from. That’s just cool.

I think the whole Hanson story is simple one of dedication, product, and patience. They’re dedicated to their music, they put out a solid product, and their patience has allowed them to sustain long-term success. They’ve made it on their own terms on their own schedule.

Sidenote: In a strange set of circumstances involving Ryan Singer and his former employer, I happened to go see a Hanson show at the House of Blues in Chicago a few years ago. I was impressed and thoroughly entertained. I also got a chance to meet the guys and was impressed by their down to earth nature and genuine love for what they get to do every night. They love their music, they love their fans, their fans love them, and their fans love their music. It’s the perfect loop.

+--------------------------+---------------+
| country                  | country_count |
+--------------------------+---------------+
| United States            |        403585 |
| United States of America |        201800 |
| USA                      |        127270 |
| Canada                   |         88615 |
| United Kingdom           |         77154 |
| Great Britain            |         41376 |
| Australia                |         27648 |
| Germany                  |         25266 |
| Spain                    |         23312 |
| France                   |         22422 |
| UK                       |         16280 |
| Netherlands              |         15488 |
| Ireland                  |         15439 |
| New Zealand              |         12391 |
| Belgium                  |          9648 |
| Italy                    |          9608 |
| Deutschland              |          9600 |
| Switzerland              |          9281 |
| Mexico                   |          8866 |
| US                       |          8351 |
| Denmark                  |          7044 |
| India                    |          6302 |
| Brazil                   |          5835 |
| Sweden                   |          5662 |
| China                    |          5139 |
| Poland                   |          4963 |
| South Africa             |          4894 |
| Schweiz                  |          4514 |
| Japan                    |          4168 |
| Singapore                |          4141 |
| Norway                   |          4125 |
| Austria                  |          3793 |
| England                  |          3434 |
| Hong Kong                |          3422 |
| United Arab Emirates     |          3410 |
| Thailand                 |          2705 |
| Israel                   |          2598 |
| U.S.A.                   |          2496 |
| Portugal                 |          2491 |
| Russian Federation       |          2360 |
| Costa Rica               |          2337 |
| Philippines              |          2269 |
| Viet Nam                 |          2142 |
| Jordan                   |          1973 |
| Nederland                |          1928 |
| Finland                  |          1848 |
| Brasil                   |          1804 |
| Argentina                |          1750 |
| Turkey                   |          1713 |
| Peru                     |          1488 |
| Malaysia                 |          1481 |
| The Netherlands          |          1433 |
| Russia                   |          1398 |
| Greece                   |          1144 |
| Chile                    |          1142 |
| Romania                  |          1106 |
| Danmark                  |          1063 |
| België                   |          1056 |
| Ukraine                  |          1048 |
+--------------------------+---------------+

For example, there are 1481 people in the Highrise contact database from Malaysia, 3422 from Hong Kong, 23,312 from Spain, etc.

Note: People can enter whatever they want in the country field which is why some enter USA, some United States, and some United States of America.

Today we’re excited to unveil an enhancement that makes using Highrise even more convenient: The sidebar search-for-a-person feature is now significantly faster than before.

Searching for a person or company from the sidebar on the Dashboard or a person/company’s page is the most frequently used feature in all of Highrise. Highrise is about getting to a person/company’s page so you can enter a note or look up a previous conversation or grab a phone number. Now you can do that a whole lot faster. More speed and less wait time makes this experience markedly better.

Making this faster on the user experience side wasn’t the only goal here: The new sidebar search also reduces call-backs to the server. That lowers the number of requests to the database which, indirectly, makes everything else a little bit faster too.

Watch this video to see it in action

Sam Stephenson, one of our developers here at 37signals, has been working hard to make this a reality. And now that we’ve launched it, he put together a video showing you the before and after:

We hope this helps makes using Highrise an even better experience. Thanks for your continued support!