When we launched the multi-user version of Backpack we added the Newsroom. The Newsroom has a message board (for Basic plans and higher) as well as a latest activity block that shows a list of new pages, changes, calendar additions, etc.

But soon we realized the Newsroom was missing something. It didn’t show you upcoming events from the handy Backpack calendar. Good news: As of today it does.

If you have any events on the Backpack Calendar that are coming up in the next 7 days we’ll show up to 15 of them them in a strip on the right side of the Newsroom. If there are no events in the next 7 days the strip won’t appear.

(Zoom to full size) The name of the calendar is displayed above the event, in the same color as that calendar. (You can color code each calendar so, for example, Sam’s events in the Calendar and his name in the Newsroom Calendar Strip always show up in purple.) And if there’s anything coming up today the date is yellow (otherwise it’s a muted grey).

So how did we get here?

We’re really happy with the way it works and the way it looks. But it took a pile of iterations to get here.

First we started with just text for the dates…

Continued…

Programming/Tech Jobs

ESPN is looking for a Senior Rails Developer in Burbank, CA.

Harvard Business is looking for a LINUX Systems Administrator in Watertown (Boston), MA.

Affinity Labs is looking for a Rails Developer in San Francisco, CA.

Punchbowl Software is looking for a Expert Ruby on Rails Developer in Framingham, MA.

The Reno Gazette Journal is looking for a Web Programmer in Reno, NV.

Malenke|Barnhart is looking for a Senior Interactive Developer in Denver, CO.

Market7 is looking for an Agile Engineer in San Francisco, CA.

Barefoot, Inc. is looking for a Senior Rails Developer in Cincinnati, OH.

Camber Corporation is looking for a Senior Web Application Engineer in Honolulu, HI.

Check out all the Programming Jobs currently available on the Job Board.

Design Jobs

Happy Cog is looking for a Creative Director in Philadelphia, PA.

Apple is looking for a Senior Web Development Engineer in Vancouver, BC.

Cook Medical is looking for a Flash Designer/Developer in Bloomington, IN.

Woot is looking for a Web Designer in St. Louis, MO.

Flickr is looking for a Senior User Experience Designer in San Francisco, CA.

Newgrounds.com is looking for a Web Development Guru in Philadelphia, PA.

Amazon is looking for a Customer Experience Designer in Seattle, WA.

NextScreen is looking for a Web Developer in Austin, TX.

Confidential is looking for an Associate Creative Director in Hollywood, CA.

SEOmoz, Inc. is looking for a Lead Web/Interface Designer in Seattle, WA.

Billups Design is looking for a Front-End Web Developer in Chicago, IL.

Check out all the Design Jobs currently available on the Job Board.

More jobs!

The Job Board is flush with great programmer and designer jobs all over the country (and the world).

At our company-wide get together last December we decided that 2008 was going to be a year of workplace experiments. Among other things, we discussed how we could make 37signals one of the best places in the world to work, learn, and generally be happy.

Here’s are a few of the things we’ve implemented so far:

Shorter work weeks

Last summer we experimented with 4-day work weeks. People should enjoy the weather in the summer. We found that just about the same amount of work gets done in four days vs. five days.

So if that’s the case we could either push everyone to work harder during those five days or we could just skip one of those days. We decided to skip one of those days.

So recently we’ve instituted a four-day work week as standard. We take Fridays off. We’re around for emergencies, and we still do customer service/support on Fridays, but other than that work is not required on Fridays.

Three-day weekends mean people come back extra refreshed on Monday. Three-day weekends mean people come back happier on Monday. Three-day weekends mean people actually work harder and more efficiently during the four-day work week.

Funding people’s passions

We decided that 37signals would help people pay for their passions, interests, or other curiosities. We want our people to experience new things, discover new hobbies, and generally be interesting people.

For example, Mark has recently taken up flight lessons. 37signals is helping him pay for those. If someone wants to take cooking lessons, we’ll help pay for those. If someone wants to take a woodworking class, we’ll help pay for that.

Part of the deal is that if 37signals helps you pay, you have to share what you’ve learned with everyone. Not just everyone at 37signals, but everyone who reads our blog. So expect to see some blog posts about these experiences.

Discretionary spending accounts

We’re in the process of giving everyone at 37signals a credit card. If you want a book or some software or you want to go to a conference, it’s on us. We just ask people to be reasonable with their spending.

If there’s a problem, we’ll let the person know. We’d rather trust people to make reasonable spending decisions than assume people will abuse the privilege by default.

We’ll post updates if we have them

The ideas above are active experiments. We’ll report back if we learn anything – good or bad – about what we’re doing and how it’s working.

“If you think you are too small to be effective, you have never been in bed with a mosquito.” -Betty Reese

Did you know we have an email newsletter that we send out about once a month? The newsletter is a summary of popular posts on SvN, new product feature highlights, links to things we find interesting, and other stuff.

We don’t sell, trade, publish, or otherwise abuse your email address. That wouldn’t be cool.

To sign up just enter your email address:

So… We’ve managed to build a really successful business through word of mouth. We’ve dabbled in text ads here, and a couple display ads there, but it’s our customers who are responsible for spreading our word far and wide. In four years we’ve probably spent less than $25,000 on advertising.

Let’s try something new

We love that we’re a word of mouth business. We plan on remaining a strong word of mouth business. Trusted recommendations are gold.

But we’d also like to begin experimenting with other forms of advertising. More “traditional” forms, but in a non-traditional way. If that makes sense we’ll probably get along great.

We’re interested in significantly broadening the awareness of the 37signals brand, our unique take on software, and our products. We have a story to tell and products to sell.

Get in touch

If you’re an ad agency that’s up to the challenge of working with us, we’d love to hear from you. Our standards are high. We want great work. Innovative work. Memorable work. But above all, effective work. We love great advertising and loathe bad advertising. We’re prepared to take this seriously.

Please shoot me an email if you think you could be the ones. Send to svn at 37signals dot com and include [ad pitch] in the subject line. Thanks.

The Brash Boys at 37signals Will Tell You: Keep It Simple, Stupid is a four-page article in the March 2008 issue of Wired Magazine about 37signals. It should be on the newsstands this week.

[Hansson] and his partners at software developer 37signals have backed up the big talk. Rails has continued its run of popularity; over the years, tens of thousands of programmers have used it to create countless online applications, including podcasting service Odeo and microblogging phenomenon Twitter. And Basecamp, 37signals’ Rails-powered, easy-to-use online collaboration software, boasts more than 2 million account holders. Signal vs. Noise, the 37signals blog, pulls in 75,000 readers a day. Hansson and 37signals cofounder Jason Fried are “revered,” says business author Seth Godin. “They are as close as we get to demigods online.”

As “revered” “demigods,” — come on Seth, we’re blushing! — we’re definitely pleased with the article and think it’s a thoughtful, evenhanded story. (Plus the photo makes us look like cool Euro DJs.)

What about the backlash part of the story? Well, Andy Warhol once said, “Don’t read what they write about you, just measure it in inches.” True words those. Nonetheless, let’s set the record straight on a few myths mentioned in the story…

Myth: Whoever spends the most wins

What’s more, 37signals’ ideological objections to outside funding could make them less able to withstand competition. Nicholas Carr, author of The Big Switch, says companies like 37signals won’t have the resources to fight should larger firms with huge economies of scale and backend infrastructure decide to take them on. “They’re going to have a very tough challenge,” he says.

We continue to find this argument flawed. First of all, a few rounds of VC millions won’t put us on equal footing with bazillion dollar giants like Google, Microsoft, or other masters of economies of scale.

Second of all, we’re not in the winner-take-all software world of the 90’s anymore. Thanks to the web, there’s plenty of room for lots of companies, ideas, and products to flourish. The behemoth model isn’t the only game in town. There’s plenty of opportunity, success, and profitability to go around.

Lastly, we think our biggest competitor is habit—people using the phone, email, paper, pencils, post-it notes, and fax machines. These are the people we want to win over. We believe the simple software we’re building is the best way to do it.

Myth: 37signals customers are unhappy

The Basecamp message boards are filled with complaints from unhappy users, fed up with the software’s paucity of features who have switched to competing products.

It’s too bad the article didn’t quote any of the thousands of satisfied customers who love our software (here’s just a few). Or mention the love letters we get all the time from people who’ve found our products to be a godsend for their businesses. Or mention the people who left only to come back after they realized the alternatives with all the features were better on paper than in practice.

Our customer retention rates are very healthy and, in our most recent Basecamp customer satisfaction survey, 94% of customers said they would recommend Basecamp to friends and colleagues. We’re extremely proud of that. We believe we continue to do the right thing for our customer base as a whole.

This is especially true when it comes to feature requests. The number one reason people say they like using our products is because they are simple and easy to use. To maintain that advantage you have to be really careful about how you evolve. There’s nothing easier than saying yes, but even just a few too many yeses can make a good thing go bad. Balance is key.

We consider it a top priority to keep our products simple, focused, and easy to understand. As we’ve said before, we’d rather our customers grow out of our products than never be able to grow into them in the first place.

Also: It’s unfortunate when journalists use online comments and message boards as “evidence” of anything. Really, someone wrote something negative in an online forum? What a shocker. In case you haven’t noticed, people can tend to be a teeny bit negative/antagonistic when leaving comments online. The truth is the vast majority of our customers are very happy with our products.

Myth: We don’t care about our customers

Fried says he doesn’t worry about losing individual Basecamp customers, since none of them pay more than $149 a month.

This could be taken out of context (“37signals doesn’t care about losing customers”) so let’s be clear: We care deeply about customer satisfaction and we don’t like to see customers leave us. But if we need to lose some to make others happy, we’re ok with that. We also recognize not everyone is going to like our products or our point of view. We’re ok with that too.

That’s why we’re happy to have such a diverse customer base. Unlike many enterprise software companies, we don’t rely on any one customer (or a handful of customers) as our primary revenue source. Companies with a few big clients are beholden to those customers in ways that can quickly become detrimental to the company, the product, and other customers.

By spreading our revenue source over thousands of customers — none with the upper hand on any other customer — we can make decisions that benefit the vast majority, not the wealthy minority. Since no one pays us more than $149/month, we can stick to our shared vision and provide the vast majority of customers with exactly what they come to us for: Simple software that’s quick to get started, easy to use, and provides far more value than the price we charge.

Myth: Complexity is a necessary byproduct of the modern age

In the article Don Norman says:

Complexity is a necessary byproduct of the modern age. When you actually sit down and analyze what you need to get the job done, it’s not simplicity.

We disagree. As complexity and confusion grows, simple tools become more and more valuable. And while sometimes it’s easy to think we need this that and the other to solve a problem, it’s often the simplest solution that actually gets the job done. Not everything has to be a Swiss Army Knife. Sometimes a screwdriver just needs to be a screwdriver.

Norman’s view seems rather depressing in the way it accepts complexity as an inevitable result of modernity. Dehumanization is a byproduct of the modern age too. But that doesn’t mean you just give up and surrender to it. We prefer to put up a fight.

Myth: We refuse to change

Call it arrogance or idealism, but they would rather fail than adapt.

Huh? We’re all about adapting. Our entire business and philosophy is about iteration, quick change, adaptation, and opportunity. At its core, Getting Real is about change and evolution.

Thanks

All that said, our hats are off to author Andrew Park for all his hard work on the story. While we may quibble with a few of the points in the piece, we recognize that Andrew was trying to be evenhanded and tell all sides of the story. Andrew was exceedingly professional, travelled to Chicago to meet with us in person, and, overall, was as thorough a journalist as we’ve ever met with. So thanks Andrew. And thanks to Wired for publishing the story too.

Last month I posted a peek at Queen Bee, our internal unified billing, admin, and stats platform.

That post highlighted how we help our customers update their credit cards across multiple 37signals products.

Today I want to show off a bit of the stats side of Queen Bee. Now that we’ve centralized our billing, we can centralize our stats. We can get a better feel for signups, upgrades, downgrades, and cancellations across all our products.

At the top of our Queen Bee admin screen we have a stream showing the latest activity across Basecamp, Backpack, Highrise, and Campfire. It looks like this:

Note: The names and data listed are for example purposes only. These are not real customer names and this is not real data.

We use color to help us spot trends at a glance. Here’s how it works. BLUE is for a paying signup, GREEN is for an upgrade to a pay plan, PURPLE is for a downgrade, and RED is for a paying cancellation. We also use Yellow to highlight the plan name if the signup is for a paying plan.

If someone is signing up for a new plan, we also display the referrer. You’ll see that as “via…” near the end of the line. And if someone cancels we include the age of their account (“3 months old”).

Everyone at 37signals has access to this stream of signups, upgrades, downgrades, and cancellations. It’s a great way to get a feel for patterns, how things are going in general, and where people are finding out about our products.

We hope to show off more of Queen Bee down the road.

Yesterday’s big Backpack update was a huge success. It was the best day in Backpack’s history — even better than the last big update in July ‘07 and add anywhere in Oct ‘07.

We usually don’t share numbers, but we thought we’d break tradition and give people a peek into Backpack’s signups, upgrades, and financial performance yesterday.

317 Upgrades

Yesterday 317 people upgraded their Backpack accounts. This includes free → paying upgrades and paying → paying upgrades. Here’s how they broke out:

• 2 Max ($149/month)
• 1 Premium ($99/month)
• 12 Plus ($49/month)
• 54 Basic ($24/month)
• 111 Home ($12/month)
• 137 Solo ($7/month)

61 New Pay Signups

Yesterday 61 people signed up for new paying plans. This means they selected a pay plan on the signup page. Here’s how it broke out:

• 1 Max ($149/month)
• 1 Premium ($99/month)
• 13 Plus ($49/month)
• 26 Basic ($24/month)
• 11 Home ($12/month)
• 9 Solo ($7/month)

We had about 200 new free signups as well, so about 30% of all signups yesterday were pay signups.

$4,131 New Net

Upgrades + pay signups – downgrades – cancellations = $4131 new net revenue for yesterday. On an annualized basis that’s about $50,000/year. We’re very happy with that number.

Thanks to all our paying customers for putting your trust in us. We hope you continue to find the new Backpack useful and valuable. We’re already finding it invaluable in keeping our own company organized (and, man, do we need it).

Backpack Grows Up

Today we unveil the major updates to Backpack we’ve been blogging about over the past week. We’ve been working on these for months and are excited to finally let them loose.

The Intranet Is Back(pack)

Intranets were big five years ago, but fell out of favor because of they were too hard to use. Back when we did client work we were hired to “repair” a number of intranets. They were a mess.

No matter the company, people’s goals were similar: They just wanted to share common information across their organization, keep a simple shared calendar so they knew when their co-workers would be out of town or at a meeting, make an announcement or two, and grab a few important files here and there. Simple things, right?

But man, the systems they were forced to use would confuse Mensans. They weren’t intranets, they were mazes. Clicks to who knows where. Clicks to nowhere. When something is too hard to use people don’t use it. No one used these intranets.

Backpack brings the promise of the intranet back and delivers real value by keeping things simple. Now you can easily share information, files, and a calendar across your company.

And for those who don’t need a company intranet, Backpack remains the same familiar personal intranet it’s always been. A place to organize your thoughts, ideas, to-dos, notes, files, calendar, and reminders.

Here’s a list of what’s new:

1. Multiuser

Since we launched Backpack in May of 2005, Backpack has been a single-user product. You could share pages via email, but you were the only person who could log into your account to make pages, add calendar items, set reminders, etc. Backpack has been our only single-user commercial product. It’s time for it to grow up and branch out.

People have been asking us how they could use Backpack to easily share information and knowledge with their co-workers, group members, or organization. They’ve wanted to use Backpack as an intranet, but they were turned away because it was single-user. The answer is multiuser.

We have a new set of subscription plans that allow you to add from 3 to 100 users to your account. Now you can use Backpack as the small business tool it’s always dreamed of being. Or, you can stick with your current plan and keep Backpack to yourself. It’s your call. If you already have an account just log in and click the Account tab to see your upgrade options.

1a. What happens to existing customers?

There’s been a lot of speculation about what multiuser means for people who are happy using the good old single-user version of Backpack they’re used to.

The short answer: Backpack can still be used exactly the same way for the same price (or less). We appreciate the fact that you’re currently satisfied with Backpack. We want to keep you happy.

Here’s how the changes will work:

• Backpack customers who were on the old $5/month Basic plan will be grandfathered on the $5/month plan (which will no longer be offered to new customers). Same price, same specs. Nothing changes. And now for just $2/month more grandfathered customers can upgrade to the new Solo plan. Just log in, click the Account tab, and upgrade to Solo or any other plan you’d like.
• Backpack customers who were on the old $9/month Plus plan will be moved to the new $7/month Solo plan. It’s the same specs but you’ll save $2/month. More on the new Solo plan below.
• Backpack customers who were on the old $14/month Premium plan will be moved to the new $12/month Home plan which includes 3 users. Old premium customers will also keep their 1000 page limit (Home is normally limited at 100 pages). Even though the Home plan doesn’t include SSL encryption, folks who were on the old Premium plan which did include SSL will also get SSL on their Home plan.

2. Flying Solo

We’ve condensed the old single-user plans into one new plan called the Solo plan. The Solo plan is perfect if you just want to use Backpack alone to organize your own stuff. The Solo plan includes a single user, 100 pages, the calendar, SSL, and 1 GB file storage. The plan is priced at only $7/month (this is actually $2/month less than the old Plus plan that it replaces). The Solo plan becomes the new entry level Backpack plan.

3. Calendar updates

If you have a multiuser Backpack plan you can now share the calendar with your co-workers. You can see each others schedules and who’s available when. The calendar is color coded to make it easy to spot each person’s appointments.

Also new in this update is the ability to toggle a calendar on or off. Just click the checkbox in front of the calendar name to toggle the visibility.

Finally, since you can share calendars you may also want to keep some of those calendars private. No problem. When you credit or edit a calendar you can decide who can see it.

Read more about the Backpack Calendar on our weblog or watch a video demo of the Backpack Calendar.

4. Newsroom

When you have two or more users in your account you’ll see a tab called Newsroom. The Newsroom tab gives you an overview of the major activity in your account. You can see who created a page, who changed a page, who added a calendar event, etc. People on single-user plans (“Grandfathered” account and “Solo” accounts) will not see the Newsroom tab. Upgrading to a multiuser plan, and adding another user to your account, will unlock this feature.

Take a tour of the Newsroom.

5. Messages

Customers on Basic or higher plans will see a new feature called Messages at the top of the Newsroom. Emailing multiple people back and forth gets messy real quick. Backpack’s message board cleans up your communications by centralizing discussions. Post a message and other people can comment. Clean, organized, and all in one place. No more endless email threads.

Watch a video overview of the new Messages feature.

6. Multiuser Reminders

Folks on the multiuser plans will notice they can also assign reminders to other people on their account. Reminders also get a new “Now” option if you just can’t wait. And since Backpack reminders can be sent as text messages to mobile phones, Reminders become a great way to make a quick announcement to multiple people in the field.

Watch a video overview of the Reminders section.

There’s more to check out…

We’ve updated the examples page with some new inspiration on how you can use Backpack in your business. We’ve also updated the tour to include screenshots and videos of the latest features. And for those who’ve never made a Backpack Page before, check out how easy it is.

We hope you love it

We’re really excited about the new stuff in Backpack. Multiuser, an updated calendar, the new Newsroom and Messages section, updated reminders, and a pile of other small updates and optimizations.

We hope you find the changes useful and valuable. Thanks again for your support and happy Backpacking!

Special $5-off offer

Use coupon code SVNLAUNCH when signing up or upgrading your account to save $5 on your next Backpack bill.