Archive for the 'Are You Normal?' Category

Before Going Forward, We Must Go Back: Raincity’s Dave O. Talks To MF on Kinzin, “Are You Normal?”, Facebook and The Online Family Experience

Published by
Megan Cole
January 15, 2008 in Application, Are You Normal?, Dave Olson, Facebook, Kinzin, Michael Fergusson, Podcast, Raincity Radio and Vancouver. 1 Comment

Michael Fergusson on RCS RadioWhile Kinzin is getting set to release their next web application that will allow families more opportunities to share, Dave Olson at Raincity Studios posted this episode on Raincity Radio just before the Holiday season. It’s a great interview (in fine Dave O. fashion) with Kinzin’s Michael Fergusson - there’s a lot in this conversation that is interesting and inspiring: on Kinzin, web applications, privacy, family, our online habits and how Kinzin wants to work along side of, or “on top of”, social networks to help the online world share what’s important and valuable to them.

Get the podcast here.
photo credit: Dave O.

ONE MILLION MARK!

Published by
Megan Cole
December 10, 2007 in Application, Are You Normal? and Kinzin. 3 Comments

It’s official.

It’s amazing to see how the “Are You Normal?” application has evolved, and to witness how quickly one million people around the world have used the app. The Kinzin team is quite proud, to say the least, but also excited to continue to provide private and fun places online for friends and families.

Technical team member Vince Hodges watched and waited to be sure to grab this momentous shot:

One Million Mark

“Vancouver’s Biggest Facebook App” (According To…)

Published by
Megan Cole
December 5, 2007 in Adonomics, Application, Are You Normal?, Facebook, Hockey Pool, Statistics and Vancouver. 3 Comments

Adonomics
…US!
No, not quite. We’re not *that* cheeky. But there are some cold, hard facts that do make the Kinzin Team take notice and feel pretty swell about all that’s evolved with our Facebook app, “Are You Normal?”.

Paul Prescod, Kinzin’s DAD, uses this neat Facebook analytics and advertising platform, Adonomics: it’s OPEN and FREE, and quite fun to play with, if you’re into Facebook analysis. And really, who isn’t? Adonomics gives you statistics on your daily active users, gains and losses, measured in days, weeks and months and displays your Facebook ranking overall.

So we thought we’d take a look and compare our app with the likes of another Vancouver success story, this city’s most successful app to date, Hockey Pool. (Go Canucks.) Hockey Pool grabbed a pretty substantial audience right off the bat (kudos to Ben - it’s a great application!) The unfortunate reality for this application is that it’s seasonal, and as Paul pointed out to me, it helps that our app is, well, not . :)

According to the chart, we’re beating Hockey Pool (gasp!) in two out of three metrics and could be closing in on the third… Thanks to Adonomics, we can officially state with zero discrepancy that “Are You Normal?” is Vancouver’s biggest Facebook app for installs. Hey Ben: Maybe we should have a go at a Hockey Normalcy app….

How Normal Are Your Habits?

Published by
Megan Cole
December 2, 2007 in Application, Are You Normal? and Facebook. 0 Comments

Habits“Are You Normal?” has just released the latest survey - it’s a doozy that most can relate to or comment on: How Normal Are Your Habits? We all have them, good or bad, and it’s kind of nice to be encouraged to get a small glimpse into your true habitual self. Visit “Are You Normal?” here to begin.

The Kinzin family continues to receive some excellent contribution and suggestions from users all over the world - want to be a part of the party? Please suggest topics or write full surveys on our discussion board or become a fan and give us your thoughts on the fan page.

Look for new surveys weekly!

Why I Love “Are You Normal?”

Published by
mirandabon
November 25, 2007 in Application, Are You Normal? and Community. 0 Comments

Kinzin Team

1. It’s fun to expose yourself , and others! - I can’t believe how much I have learned about my coworkers and friends from the questions! Really! There is so much discussion in areas I wouldn’t normally feel very comfortable going into unless I had the shield of Mt. Computer.

2. There’s a good amount of us in that little app - I think there are some sumptuous hints at who the creators really are.

3. Everyone pitches in. There are so many people volunteering content every day, and it’s really, really good! We’re making a fun community of question askers, and that is special and valuable.

4. I love that no one wants to be normal. The worst thing to me when I was a kid was how often people would tell me I wasn’t normal. I hated being weird. Now everyone wants to be weird with me.

5. It is a popular app, which is fun and makes me feel special.

6. I love the team magic!

Are You Normal? Number 1 On Facebook Application Recently Popular List

Published by
Megan Cole
November 19, 2007 in Application, Are You Normal? and Kinzin. 0 Comments

Number 1

User Contribution At Its Finest

Published by
Megan Cole
November 19, 2007 in Application, Are You Normal? and Facebook. 0 Comments

Last week , Are You Normal? crossed over the 500K mark and yesterday hit Number One on Facebook’s Application Directory Recently Popular list.

Over 500k
So what we’ve done is reach out to our many users and ask for their input, ideas, contribution and advice on the content of our application. We’ve had great response world wide and are continuing to receive survey ideas, topics and completed surveys.

It’s been pretty neat to speak with some of the fans of the application, via Facebook messaging for the most part. At the same time, it’s been useful to hear from those people who are not so hot on AYN, but who’ve given some solid constructive criticism and suggestions for ways to improve.

Our latest survey, Are You A Normal Conspiracy Theorist? was written by a local Vancouver artist, and the photography we’ve gathered from all over via Flickr, graciously from Gabriel M., Steve Jurvetson, x-eyedblonde, Yaniv Ben-Arie, CT Snow and Jon Rawlinson. Thank you to all - the app is what it is because of you!

If you’d like to contribute content, visit our topic suggestion page.

Joyent Accelerators Work: Kinzin’s Proof Is In The App

Published by
Megan Cole
November 13, 2007 in Application, Are You Normal?, Facebook, Joyent, Kinzin, Technology and Vancouver. 0 Comments

Joyent Accelerator
Today Joyent announced their new Facebook developers program, Joyent Accelerators. Kinzin is well acquainted with Joyent’s infrastructure - it’s what has made the scalability of the “Are You Normal?” Facebook application manageable and successful. The app has jumped to half a million users in a month, has been one of the top apps on the “Recently Popular” Facebook list (more than once), and continues to add tens of thousands new users every day. Joyent’s full case study and more details on the app can be found here.

Joyent Accelerators is “free, fast and scalable hosting”, as quoted by Facebook Senior Platform Manager, Dave Morin.

Joyent has partnered with Facebook and Dell to deliver this sophisticated, scalable, on-demand infrastructure. For developers, it means a quick and efficient launch of Facebook applications that are capable of scaling to millions of users - FOR FREE.

You can read plenty more about this announcement and partnership on a number of our technologist friends’ tech news sites: Read/Write Web, Innovation Creators, Rootly, Social media today, Information Week.

  • Thank-you to Kristie Wells, Mark Mayo and the Joyent Team.

    • More mainstream media attention for “Are You Normal?”

    Published by
    Michael (23%) Fergusson
    November 2, 2007     in 24 Hours Newspaper, About Kinzin, Application, Are You Normal?, Community, Facebook, Kinzin, Media, Social Networks, Statistics, Vancouver and Writers. 0 Comments

    Whew. What a week!

    Last week, 24 Hours Newspaper published a story about Kinzin’s Facebook plugin Are You Normal? in their print and online magazine (photo on the left, by Rob Kruyt, that accompanied the article). In the article, I’m quoted as saying that we’ve reached 90,000 people around the world. Thanks to the power of the network effect, as of this writing we’ve already passed 245,000 (from 184 countries!) and still going strong.

    The point of this post is not to toot our own horn (at least, not only to do that :-), but to mention for your interest that the next set of survey questions we publish will be written in part by our user base. We’ve had questions submitted from Finland, Spain, Greece, Australia, and the UK so far. I’m very excited about this in particular. As with many things, when we’re talking about what’s “normal”, what we choose to measure is often as interesting as the results.

    I’ll keep you posted as things progress…

    Kinzin’s Paul Prescod At Vancouver’s First Facebook Developers Garage

    Published by
    Megan Cole
    October 24, 2007     in About Kinzin, Application, Are You Normal?, Developer, Facebook, Facebook Garage, Paul Prescod, Technology and Vancouver. 1 Comment

    Facebook Developer Garage Vancouver Oct 2007

    Last night was all about the app.

    Vancouver, or more recently referred to as “Techcouver”, held its’ first Facebook Developer Garage event downtown at the Vancouver Film School. The event was completely “sold-out” by over double the capacity of the space, so there wasn’t a seat to be had. Once the Nazi-tech guy made his way from the floor back to the booth for the main event to commence, people began to fill the isles and find space wherever they could. It was a packed house.
    Facebook Developer Garage Vancouver Oct 2007

    There were about 9 Facebook applications in all that were on display over the 3 hours. Each developer, or team of developers, grabbed the spotlight for a 10-minute overview of their respective app and covered any technical aspects worth mentioning and sharing, followed by a brief Q and A for each. David Morin, Senior Platform Manager for Facebook (nice title buddy) was meant to be joining us in the flesh for our inaugural evening, but had to cancel 48 hours in advance due to some “big meeting” at HQ. But he was kind enough to take a few minutes out to appear via Skype Video, as he said a few nice words, opened it up to the floor for some questions, when sadly, the connection was lost.

    Facebook Developer Garage Vancouver Oct 2007
    Paul Prescod, ‘DAD’ at Kinzin, shared the “Are You Normal?” app with the crowd. When he gave the current-users statistics (now over 114K in 3 short weeks), there was a gasp as a hush fell over the room. Well, maybe that’s a bit of a stretch. But nonetheless, impressive stuff! Johnny Bufu and Boris Mann wrapped the night with a few words on the open web. Facebook? Open??

    There is a complete breakdown of each presentation on the live blog post from Miss 604, and on Roland Tanglao’s Jaiku Channel.

    « Previous Entries

    Join Kinzin Button

    About

    You are currently browsing the The Kinzin Blog weblog archives for the Are You Normal? category.

    Longer entries are truncated. Click the headline of an entry to read it in its entirety.

    Latest

    RSS