All about Skalfa web-projects.
Wednesday, June 17th, 2009
Hey, today we have some more news than just fabulous we-are-working-on-WackWall-2.0 one. We have successfully finished deploying new set of management features for the current WackWall platform.
From now on Network Admnistrators can:
- Remove your social network from WackWall;
- Remove all kinds of content from your social network;
- Remove comments from all kinds of content on your social network;
- Ban users.
These features were long due and we took our time to release them now instead of further forcing to wait for them in the upcoming grand re-launch.
Feel free to submit feedback at dev.wackwall.com.
Posted in Projects, WackWall | Tags: features · update
Monday, February 16th, 2009
Looks like OpenWack.org site is kind of online. With that we want to announce that OpenWack is the future engine for WackWall webservice and is currently in the works.
Read the site materials to get the basic understanding of OpenWack and visit its blog: OpenWack.org/blog. This will be a separate blog devoted to OpenWack platform only. As its preface is the article about what OpenWack is and how it will work for you.
Posted in News, OpenWack, Products, Projects, WackWall | Tags: development
Friday, January 30th, 2009
As the first launch of this year we set up WackWorld Expo (the name resembles something to me??) website as a source of information about anything related to WackWall and OpenWack.
Things are rather quiet on both projects’ camps only because background works are in progress. Think OpenWack = timebomb. As of this moment WackWorld Expo is the medium of information about WackWall status quo and semi-official OpenWack development log.
Pay attention that we plan to make WackWorld Expo an independent resource as soon as it can live without our contribution. Learn how you can be involved.
Posted in OpenWack, Products, Projects, WackWall | Tags: launch · wackworld
Wednesday, January 21st, 2009
I’m writing this message to reveal the Skalfa master plan for this year. 2009 is here and I want to share the most significant parts of it with you.
First of all, I’m proud that we didn’t suffer any layoffs in the current global economic climate. Skalfa entered its 5th year of existence as a securely profitable entity with stable market positions and steady growth. Another thing that I want to specially mark is the talents we have on our tank. When you have so much bright people under one roof there’s something amazing got to be born.
SkaDate
So far we have achieved remarkable footprint in the small community business market with our flagship product, SkaDate. Our recent release of SkaDate 7 is already showing the world the new level of community tools, showing us the next stage of community management problems, and the new objectives for the development of the product. In 2009 SkaDate will continue extending its feature set but will also integrate several solutions from 3rd parties, such as SMS billing, scam/fraud control tools, image tools, background checks, etc. This is an important step to take in the direction of helping businesses decide their actual problems, not merely providing technical tools. Another important aspect of SkaDate development is refining and fine-tuning the existing features. This is where we hugely rely on customer feedback, and SkaDate 7 is the result.
To extend the portfolio of services to support SkaDate we are working on creating SkaDate Marketplace – a place where certified specialists can offer their services to the end users. Finally, we are looking into signing several deals with software companies for custom development partnership on the base of SkaDate. We think that the diversity of service offers for SkaDate is going to create huge benefit for the customers and will contribute to our goal – producing more quality online dating sites.
WackWall, OpenWack
Let me use this opportunity to shed some light on the current state of things with the two projects: OpenWack, and WackWall.
Currently we are working on the new OpenWack platform which is going to be the new engine for WackWall, and also available as an open source community software package under the GPL license. Yes, Skalfa eCommerce enters free software market this year. We are actively working on the prototypes and concepts.
WackWall is going to stay a place where you can create your own social network or online collaboration/communication tool within minutes, absolutely free. Being based on OpenWack platform is going to greatly diversify its features, possibilities, and purposes of use. Expect the major boost of these with the WackWall 2.0 relaunch on the OpenWack platform.
OpenWack is planned to highly rely on 3rd party development and support. We will have more details for you on that later.
Other Skalfa projects
While working on major projects we always worked on several minor ones. Those are for our own needs, value-added services for the existing solutions, and simply tiny useful products that are fun to develop. Expect some shutdowns and launches from us this year because we have to keep focus on things we do best of all – building impressive community tools, and at the same time we need to enhance our offers with value-added services.
2009 is the year that every entity must keep laser-sharp focus on the core of its business. Take this global recession as not a slowdown but a chance to streamline your operations, clear out your goals, reduce costs, and find new opportunities for your business. We are proud to work with you.
Thank you,
Emil Sarnogoev
CEO
Skalfa eCommerce
Posted in Miscellaneous, News, Products, Projects |
Tuesday, December 9th, 2008
I’ve been thinking about the situation with Ning shutting down adult social networks on its platform.
The problem with free hosted services for social networks is the same with Ning. It’s only a matter of time when your interests go against theirs – monetary, ideological, or whatever else. At least nobody owes you anything – it’s free, what the hell. Nobody approaches your individual problems – this is one reason you can find yourself moving to another place again.
I believe this time people will be more careful with choosing provider for their community sites. One ground rule here is not to change one “walled garden” (a closed place where your community depends on business decisions that the service owners make) for another. Sure, Ning claims that you can get a running copy of your site with your members and data but Ning proved that not to be the case. Currently they have problems with even meaningfully exporting your data. If they had any success with that no adult communities would be seeking new providers now.
Exporting members to another place is evil – you don’t know who many members will survive it. You need to get them to actually respond to your newsletter by moving their activity to the new site, you need to have them get used to changes which every provider has. How many members are you going to lose? 50%? 80%?
1) If you do not see too much value in time invested in growing your community – you can move on and find one of services similar to Ning.
2) If you want control and guarantees you need to bear with the thought that it costs money. A solution like SkaDate might be the choice, given that it has a no-brainer hosted social network site solution. This is freedom. At any point you can opt out for an independent set up, so this is where you stop moving your community between providers.
3) If you want both free and control that’s where you choose WackWall. Solving the problem of free hosted solution and independence is one of the major reasons we are introducing WackWall 2.0 relaunch soon. I will follow up on this specific topic later.
This time the choice should be made by you – not your platform provider. Time and effort to grow a community is your main resource, I believe it should be put on top of your priority list before you start digging again.
Good luck with that.
Posted in Miscellaneous, Projects, WackWall | Tags: move · SkaDate
Monday, December 8th, 2008
I’m sorry to inform you that adult social networks on WackWall will temporarily stop supporting video sharing. Currently we only have YouTube option for video hosting. It automatically requires any video that you upload to comply with their terms of use.
Although not all videos that are being uploaded on adult networks violate these terms but generally the understandable non-compliance is currently taking place that is why we had to turn it off completely for the time being until we introduce self-hosted (or at least embeddable 3rd party) video option.
Thank you for understanding.
Posted in Projects, WackWall | Tags: video
Friday, December 5th, 2008
A lot of people seem to be pissed off about Ning shutting down adult sites. Sure, this is their service and they can do what they want with it. I just see red lights flashing all around the company (sorry for pun).
Ning started adopting cut-off-end-of-story policy in the recent time. The first precedent was when they shut down WidgetLaboratory. And plenty of Ning sites as a side-effect. WidgetLaboratory was as pissed off as they could and started crying foul. Ning didn’t seem to care. Michael Arrington called WidgetLaboratory idiots for posting private correspondence that didn’t support their case. I’m not in a position to judge who was right, there was a lot of heat about that. I suspect Ning to have been on a firmer ground but it all doesn’t matter. Only does the fact that a lot of social network sites went down – those using WidgetLaboratory widgets. It took 3 days to only hear something from Ning. Let alone putting sites back online. If you plan to turn off a misbehaving partner make sure your customers do not suffer or at least do not beg any word from you about why you sent them offline.
Now we have this – Ning will no longer support adult sites. Admitting the fact that they have no idea of monetizing adult sites they point you at the door. No assistance except for finding out about issues of exporting data. Let alone as-smooth-to-move-as-possible alternative solution.
Shutting down sites can make as much business sense as one can eat. I just don’t seem to like the idea that your community with all your time and effort investment can go down as a result of a brief business meeting in the host company with cut-em-off decision. They don’t know you, they don’t see how hard it is to gather like-minded people to build real conversations, so the decision comes easy. You’re no longer with them. As well as countless other sites. Ning can play monopolist and heavily moderate comments on blogs and forums while they see no real value in webmasters who made the service popular in the first place.
I liked one saying by somebody (if you know the source let me know I will link to it) about free hosted social network solutions (and Ning in particular): “In a perfect world it means that there’s someone else to care about software, updates, hosting and uptime. In the real world it means that your community is at the company’s mercy.” Speaking about Ning’s case I can’t agree more.
Maybe it’s time to take control for those webmasters who invest so much time in developing their communities. One answer is an affordable and independent managed community site solution from SkaDate. If you want control while not diving into technical distractions that’s the way to go.
On the other hand, WackWall is going to offer an interesting twist for retaining control. Being a free hosted social network service it’s going to offer to go independent with your original site and all your members, custom mods and template without any downtime whatsoever. I’m going to cover more details with soon-to-come WackWall 2.0 launch. Watch the news and good luck with your post-Ning roaming. Maybe it’s all for good.
Posted in Miscellaneous, Projects, WackWall | Tags: adult · migrate · ning · SkaDate
Tuesday, December 2nd, 2008
Let me congratulate all Skalfa employees and customers with this important date. We just turned 4 years!
There are a lot of complexities in running a social tech company and we’ve eaten a lot of them during all this time learning to produce the software that solves people’s needs and supporting their businesses. As we move forward our vision clears out, our operations get more streamlined, and our focus gets even sharper as Skalfa capitalizes on its niche and shows steady growth.
I’m glad we made no layoffs since the nuclear winter start and don’t plan any in the nearest future. I can’t remember any moment in our history when we had a better team than now. That’s a fascinating feeling when you see talents working on what they can do best of all.
We plan revolutionary upgrades for 2 of our products and at least 2 new product launches in the upcoming year. And we are starting with that right now. The world is going to see the result of our hard work in exactly 30 days. Well, some select customers are going to see it in just 15. 
Thanks for kicking with us!
Emil Sarnogoev
CEO
Skalfa eCommerce
Posted in FaceJuggle, News, Products, Projects, SkaDate, SkaLinks, Skalfa Ads, WackWall, chuPPo | Tags: birthday · company
Monday, November 10th, 2008
WackWall has now three new features:
1. HTML box allows you to add any content into the box. For example you may add your own advertisements and run them free of charge and get revenue.
2. RSS box – add news from your or other blogs it will help you attract new members and get activity on your network. You can always have fresh content on your theme even before your site gains members and activity.
3. Widget gallery with more than 70,000 widgets from Widgetbox. We integrated and tested the library with 70 thousand widgets not long ago into WackWall. Now this feature is officially available. You can choose any widget from the library and use them in your network. Your members will love them.
How to use:
To access three new features go to your network’s administration area -> under the Features/Layout section look to the right and you will see a box with “Custom components”-> drag and drop any of the feature into a desired block of your network -> click the icon of a screw key in front of the added feature -> follow the and hit the button Save Changes.
All three features can be used on the index page.
Your feedback or commetns are welcome.
Posted in WackWall |
Tuesday, October 21st, 2008
We have finished the development of the new WackWall feature – it is the News section. All administrators or new social network creators at WackWall.com can post news on their networks by ticking off blog posts.
How to use this new feature:
Go to your network administration area -> Features layout -> Drag and drop “Site News” from the column “Add features” to your homepage -> click the button “Save changes”.
Then go to your main page and select the option to write a blog post. In the interface for writing a blog post you will see a check box “Mark as News” tick it off and your blog post will appear in the News section.
Share your thoughts about this new addition.
Posted in WackWall |
