It’s been almost 5 years since Tim and I started building slu.sh and it’s been an interesting experience, to say the least.

Since we started slu.sh, social media, networking and bookmarking have evolved considerably. New social sites and services have sprung up, some have faded away and all the while the concept hasen’t changed very much. One thing has always been consistent, that, to be social it relies on you or them doing something. It’s always been and always will be a two way street. Mandatory interaction in order to sustain that minimum return.

While some places offer services that other don’t [or maybe they just call it something else], at this point, social ‘anything’ has begun to level off. We have big players, the minor leagues and the indies all carving out niches for themselves.

When slu.sh opens up [Open Beta soon] you will make or break this niche. Only you can decide if what slu.sh has to offer is something you need and use and want to share with others.

My first post on this blog was our mission statement – but didn’t get into any details – and you can read it here

slu.sh only grows if you join. The quality of the web only gets better when your voice is heard.

slu.sh is a social-learning site where registered users can store for themselves and the community, links to resources from around the web.

Stored, shared and rated for anyone who uses the web as a tool.

Unlike other Search Engines and Tutorial Sites, slu.sh is dedicated to being a direct line between you and the information you need and want to learn. While slushers focus on the quality of the resources they slush and whether they are fundamentally relevant and usable, slu.sh users then pit those slushes against others in the same Heading. Its through this process those slushes are ranked.

slu.sh is not about drilling-down for the information you need, turning what should be a simple ‘search-then-find’ mission into an unreliable‘guess-then-leave’ frustration.

No longer should algorithms, spiders and the SEO’dness of a website factor into whether or not a resource lands in front of your eyes. This is one of the fundamental ideas behind slu.sh; that not all resources are equal and that search results, without context and accountability are a waste of time and a terrible way to learn.

And lets face it, every day there are more of us turning to the web to learn something. Isn’t it about time we had some tools to do that properly?

And there you have it…

slu.sh is a community of “Teachers & Learners” brought together with the singular goal of aggregating and sharing the resources we all need in order to create, understand and share.

slu.sh Breakdown

slushing Primer

Kibble is the point system we use throughout slu.sh. You earn Kibble, loose Kibble, give kibble and take away kibble. Every registered user has kibble and as you amass kibble, new features and functions open up to you. The idea is to give a little back to a slushers each time that slusher gives to the community.

Now, you might be asking yourself, why bother with kibble? Well the answer to that is simple, the more involved you are with slu.sh the more you can do.

Each action on slu.sh has kibble associated with it – So earning kibble is easy for an average user who slushes quality and votes and comments regularly. They’ll be able to set themselves up with Perks in a relatively short amount of time.

All in all, the concept of kibble, although not new, is a very important feature on slu.sh. We want slushers to earn perks and privileges because they’ve taken to the time to make slu.sh a quality place to be.

slu.sh is about the social learning web and Kibble plays a large role as a form of positive reinforcement.

If you’re a BETA tester and haven’t visited in a while, maybe it’s time to check in. Open BETA is coming soon!

So far things have been very good. Very promising and very kind. A few ideas have been taken into consideration and tweaks/changes implemented and today, after having absorbed a lot of what’s been said and asked, I find myself sitting and doing what we all dread doing - writing The FAQ | Help.

Of course it’s important but almost *more* importantly, it really gives you a sense of how complicated things may have become. There’s a tendency to forget the changes made and the features added one on top of another and since navigation is, of course, second nature (when you’ve been building it for this long), taking some time to put myself in a new-users shoes, the tables turn.

slush is sophisticated. Some would say, it’s also complicated. Truthfully, it is a little daunting. There really is no website out there like it. It will force people to reevaluate the future of how content can be served… or send them running away screaming because it’s just too much. And, yes, there is such a thing as ‘too-much’. We’re riding that line.

We’re on that edge.

We slide along and teeter from one side to the next not knowing exactly where we’re going to fall but with the mind-set that, ‘Hey, we’re doing what we’re doing because !we want to use it.” We don’t have to cater to the norm. We don’t feel the need to meet expectations. What we do, we do because it accomplishes something that is important to Tim and I. We’re just !really happy to share it with everyone else and it’s our hope that it does for others, what it does for us.

Stay tuned, prospective slushers!

Unsure of how one version would be welcomed over another, we’ve opted for three variants to try out. So in a sense, what we have done is regressed to our initial version (though the code was rewritten from scratch)  then added a stripped-down function (second version) and after playing around, I’ve redesigned a third version that compliments the regressed version.  So even though we have it working, Tim and I are going to be going back and forth on the usability and functionality for the next little bit.

*phew* I know. It’s important, though, only time and use will tell us which one will win out.

I’ve also set up a Twitter http://twitter.com/slushTweets account for slush, a Facebook Fan Page:  http://www.facebook.com/pages/slush/116046628432797 as well as a YouTube page: http://www.youtube.com/user/slushVideos. It will host our Help/FAQ videos.

The 3D work for the Intro is nearing completion. I’m working on the last shot. I had to re-rig the character to accommodate some new and necessary mobility for the new shot – so that took some time. The shot itself is fairly long as well so I had to get just the camera move just right (:  When it’s done, I’ll finally be able to start on some ‘Help’ videos which require the site to be functional for the video screen-captures to be effective. Well, at least partially functional. (;

-to save slushguy from his nightmare.  She’s a big-city girl with big dreams and aspirations. Today, with one simple act, she enlightened her fellow webonaught.

Would you?

slush has a mascot of sorts.

Meet slushguy!

slushguy is angry today my friends. slushguy is sick and tired of it. You know. It.

Soon, slushguy will meet slushgirl and slushgirl is smarter than slushguy and will show slushguy where it’s at. You know. The other ‘it’. The cool ‘it’.

I’m not going to get heavily into what slush is all about, not right now anyways (there will be plenty of time for that as we move forward); however it is important to note that without you, without the people who care about the content on the web – without being able to make the distinction between good and bad – there would be no slush.

slush means to add accountability to content-creators. It means to point fingers at the people who shouldn’t be doing what they are doing and patting those on the back who deserve the spotlight. And almost more importantly, to bypass the ‘seo’ness over content’ that search engines of today place more and more emphasis on. Yes you can rank up based on how well you ‘game the system’ rather than how qualified you are.

So on that note, slush only exists because we were fed up. Our hope is maybe, some of you are too.

slush has been a work in progress since 2007.

Before the name slush was settled on, it went through a steady stream of names but the idea was always the same. It wasn’t until about 6 months later that we settled on slush and another few more month before we had a basic working proof-of-concept online that we could play with. By then, around mid 2009.

About 8 months ago Tim and I decided it was time for a redesign and out came v2. Yep, before we even opened v1 to the public.

The original was fine for what it was but two years is old in (template) design years and some features were dropped and new ones created – one of the more surprising things that came of the redesign was that a few original features flourished! – the back-end was rewritten from scratch to accommodate our more focused efforts – while still maintaining a fluid and simple approach. After all, that was kind of an important point. While we would have loved to have 1 button, 1 box, 1 click = result – it just doesn’t work like that. There are hoops, my hope is that they are blurred enough and enjoyable enough that they don’t seem like an effort – especially so when you consider the other options. *cough*

So this is where we’re at right now.

The redesign is in place. The basic functions are almost complete and we are slowly approaching alpha2. No date has been set but once it is, I’ll share it here. It will be a closed alpha, of course, but I will be sharing and updating this blog with good news and snippets of what you can look forward to when we open the beta.

Stick around and you just might learn something (: