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YouAre Blog 2009 January 27 YouAre is here!

YouAre is here!

January 27th, 2009 · José Luis Antúnez · 7 Comments

YouAre Logo After six months of invite-only beta, we’re proud to announce that today we’re making YouAre available to everyone. Thank you very much for all beta testers support and feedback.

What is YouAre? What’s YouAre offering as new? Before reading our About Section it might be better to read what others have said about us, like: Duncan Riley (The Inquisitr) or Genbeta (Spanish blog).

Development

There was a time, back in Spring of 2007, when there were only a handful of applications for microblogging.

In May of 2007, we began development on YouAre. What motivated us?

  • Our reluctance to use a dashboard to publish content. We wanted the content editor and the content published on a single page. Microblogging — which was gaining popularity — allowed us to do that.
  • The need for combining both professional and online identity in one place. We believe that professional networks (Linkedin, Xing, etc.) don’t really show your true self. 140 characters does.

To achieve these objectives, we wanted a domain name that would reflect our goal. YouAre.com was perfect. The perfect URL for developing a social network and managing your identity.

About 2 weeks into development, Pownce appeared on the scene and since then there have been a ton of YATC (Yet Another Twitter Clone). When they say that YouAre is just another YATC, our response is clear. Twitter was and still is an inspiration for us. But if YouAre is a Twitter clone, then WordPress and Movable Type are clones of Blogger, Pitas and LiveJournal.

In contrast with other services, microblogging is, for us, the vehicle by which we strive to achieve our final goal: building a simple platform for managing your real-life identity and making the small things you do every day easier. Your true self is the what you build through everything you do throughout the day. With the youare.com URL which has obvious potential; for example, you could pay/validate for small items such as a coffee at your local café with a YouAre reply, or login to other web services using your YouAre ID.

Overview

On December 2007, we introduced ourselves to the Spanish community and in January 2008 to the international community. Since then we have been completing the application with passion and tranquility, since we are sure of our product.

In Summer 2008 we opened up a private beta. It was still a rough moment and there wasn’t a week that would go by without a new microblogging app. Some of our features weren’t innovative anymore, but that didn’t matter to us nor does it now. But it did force us to maintain a low profile until the environment was a bit more positive.

It’s time to open the doors. We are still developing features, such as favorites by tags, which have given us pause before activating them. We are still ironing these out.

If this is your first time on YouAre, thanks for giving us your time. You can find more info…

In september, Ping.fm and HelloTXT added YouAre in their list of sites to be updated.

The API has already been developed: as an example, creating desktop clients or for integrating YouAre into existing ones. If you like YouAre and you want to update via Twhirl, Tweetdeck or others, you just have to tell these companies you would like to be able to do so.

Welcome to YouAre :)

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pyxBrjIDJxc[/youtube]

You’re A Wonderful One – Marvin Gaye (1964)

Filed under: Development.
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7 Comments » Add your own

  1. January
    28th, 2009
    7:42 am

    Luis Rull said:

    Congratulations

  2. January
    28th, 2009
    10:35 am

    Benito Castro said:

    Hope this pace is one of many more. Good luck!!

  3. January
    28th, 2009
    2:26 pm

    Nuevos servicios originales de microblogging « Mantero.net said:

    [...] finalmente YouAre, una aplicación desarrollada por la compañía española Blogs Media (que acaba de salir de la beta privada) con un funcionamiento muy similar a Twitter pero que hace especial hincapié en la experiencia de [...]

  4. January
    30th, 2009
    11:45 am

    juan said:

    ¿Por qué no está en español? ¿por qué sólo ofrecer 140 caracteres?
    ¿por qué caer en los mismos errores y limitaciones de twitter?

  5. January
    30th, 2009
    2:48 pm

    YouAre Blog said:

    YouAre Search…

    Since we first came out in private beta in summer 2008, we provided the ability to search for people by name or city. Today, YouAre is open to everyone and we have improved our search feature to include content search.
    YouAre Search lets you search:

    P…

  6. February
    7th, 2009
    1:17 pm

    Are You Right For YouAre? | Guilda Blog said:

    [...] before allowing the masses access to what some might call YATC (Yet Another Twitter Clone). But, the YouAre team disagrees (and with just a dash of wit I might [...]

  7. February
    12th, 2009
    10:03 pm

    YouAre dejó de ser beta | said:

    [...] Más información // Informe SOCIALtech 2.0 // YouAre Blog [...]

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