Wanted to give our users a heads-up that our Social Pro feature will be undergoing some changes over the next few weeks. We’ve been informed by our data provider, Rapleaf, that they will no longer be offering the social data found in Social Pro as of Dec. 31st. The reason for all this? It’s a long story that involves referrer IDs, cookies, and advertising. But to summarize, Rapleaf offers two services. One of their services (which we don’t use) is primarily for advertising, and involves cookies. One aspect of that service recently came under some scrutiny by the WSJ (you can read Rapleaf’s technical response here), so they’re making a bunch of changes in response to all this. Those changes will impact the customer insight data that we use for Social Pro…
Rapleaf is launching a new API that will still include actionable data like age, gender, and influence, but a lot of the social data, including the really popular Faces feature we introduced in September, are going away. On the one hand, the social data was pretty darn cool, so this is a bummer. On the other hand, age and gender are really useful for email marketers too. So we’re currently trying to decide whether we should keep the demographic data and rename the feature, or keep it as “Social Pro” and work in some of our other social features (plus some new ones in the works).
At the moment though, we’ve got a bunch of other priorities we’re focused on for early 2011, so Social Pro will simply be “paused” for now. We’ll be circling back around to it very soon though.
You guys are great communicators. Thanks for keeping us in the loop re this. It will be interesting to see how this pans out. Am loving the Rapportive plug-in for Gmail that you put us onto. Will this also be affected by the Facebook ID and referral URL issue? Just curious. (P.S. Am loving my new MailChimp t-shirt.) :>
I can’t really speak for Rapportive, but I can say that for MailChimp, this is a feature we’re dealing with here. We’d hate to lose it, and we’re gonna try our darndest to work it out somehow, but we’ve also got a ton of other features we’re working on. This isn’t exactly the highest thing on our list of priorities. For some social companies out there though, this is their entire business model. So they’re going to put 110% of their effort into adapting around all this. And there are so many other, non-social companies that also use this data, so I’ve also been very interested in how it’ll all pan out.
Hi guys, I’m from Morocco, and I just wanted to say that your platform is absolutely incredible, I still need to go through all the features but I just love mailchimp :) design, ergonomy, user experience.
keep it up guys
this is just part of the pain of being first at anything… I’m sure it will all work out…
Thanks as always, John. The insight was extremely powerful and fascinating, but it was only scratching the surface. We’ve been exploring deeper, more useful ways of integrating with the Social Web that we hope to release soon.
I’m still asking Santa for some hybridized RFM type scoring to track defection and migration from and to various quintiles… (much of the info is already there, just needs sliced and diced) also, it would be a beautiful thing to track LTV, and if you combine some of those useful tools with some of the other variables like (do they have FB, Twitter, etc) you will start to get not just an incredibly clear picture of your customer/reader but how you can improve value to them and them in turn to you… ::soap box mode::
(I can dream can’t I?)
It’s especially useful when you dream out loud. The dream catchers on the product team take notes. :-)
I have to say that the Faces feature was cool, but also creepy.
Heh, also extremely human and useful. For example, seeing all the gravatars here in the comments just gives our blog a better sense of community. Compare it to some forums out there with anonymous users, where things tend to devolve into nastiness. When you see your customers and subscribers “face to face” like this, they’re not just customers and subscribers — they’re humans. And that’s been our goal here at MailChimp all along — to make email less spammy, more useful, and more human. FWIW, the Faces feature will continue to pull gravatars.
I’ll look forward to it’s return, no matter what it’s called. Naturally, I hope “free” is carried through! Kudos for having the stones to completely remove it until it’s working up to primate standards. I highly value your approach to issues and situations such as this one.
Here’s to another successful year with the Chimp… cheers!
let me read this right…..there’s never been a better time to email your people and incentivize them to get a Gravatar?
I agree with Michael, you guys are great communicators and thanks for giving the heads up on this.
I hate to see go but like someone else said, that can be a cost for being first. But it looks like we are keeping some valuable insight data, so I say keep what you can until you your ready to roll out something new.
Any demographic information we can gleem that helps better serve and support our audience as communicators and marketers.
Thanks,
Monique
I never approach someone on the social networks that was already on my list or direct a client to a profile – mailChimp takes care of that all quite nicely. While Facebook is a huge marketing platform they look very dimly upon folks that approach people in the network that you have no “inside” affiliation with. At this point, not a huge loss for me as Social Pro goes. My real clients come to my office and pay good money from the services we provide. We have created with the MailChimp api an ingenious app and deployment of an AS3 form if anyone cares to take a look. Link provided.
I have been trying to get Socialpro to work since I started with Mailchimp. Considering that I have over 20K subscribers, their faces would have been a “neat thing” but certainly not important… but the demographics information, if it works, is priceless. Today I show 0% of my 20K subscribers on Facebook, so I know that it’s waaaaay out to lunch.
I would REALLY like to have this if it works. Frankly, it is one of the reasons I chose Mailchimp over competitors
I hope it works out.
If you read back through the post you will see why social pro is showing none of the expected data…
“We’ve been informed by our data provider, Rapleaf, that they will no longer be offering the social data found in Social Pro as of Dec. 31st.”
later on they say they will be “circling back around” but for now it is on pause… I definitely thought this was a very interesting feature but with the rich feature set MailChimp offers in addition to what they offered through Social Pro I would still choose MailChimp over and over again, hands down after using other solutions that are on the market… give it a chance and I’m sure you won’t be disappointed… this one unfortunately seems to be out of their hands…
Hey John… I read the article, but the feature wasn’t working long before December 31 (that was my point).
I love the feature, or how it should work… I would really like to see it happen, one way or another… it was one of the deciding factors for me.
Please bring this feature back, even if you have to find other sources for the data. Being able to know exactly who you are marketing to, complete with links to the persons social profiles is powerful stuff. It’s one of the reasons I switched over to Mailchimp. Please try to bring back somehow, possibly even better.
I think the ability to see faces in a consolidated screen was really good. How about a simple Gravatar integration. You still support Gravatar, just need to consolidate it in the view.
Gravatars will definitely remain.
Thanks Ben for the clear communication on this; just wanted my .02 for a dream “social” feature for our use of Mailchimp:
I’d love a way to replace the archive url that’s used for all the embedded social sharing features (e.g. Like this campaign; comment on this campaign, etc.) with a custom url. We build out our own custom “archive” and would love to use Mailchimp’s integrated social features to share links to our own domain / archive… would provide enormous value to us because you guys are constantly pushing the envelope on social features that we want to integrate quickly / seamlessly.
Thanks again!
Probably the most important factor for us with the Social Pro would be the age demographic information. It would really help us find out the sweet spot for our web based clients. This information would let us offer better, and more targeted emails.
Well, it looks like a cool feature — for people that you really do know well. BUT for people you don;t know so well? I’m afraid I have to agree with Ray Salemi – cool but a bit creepy…
Thanks for the amazing product! We look forward to some updates to chimpadeedoo when you have a few minutes. Keep up the great work.
Thanks for the super clear communication about changes. Nothing beats it. As I’m on your lists I presume the next update/change on this will fly into my email, so I’m content.. Keep it up. P.S. My monkey hat has had people coming up to me all holidays and asking where they could get one… love it!
Ben,
I’ve never been too impressed with Social Pro. I know for a fact that many of the stats that zeroed out were not accurate. This was from the very beginning that I signed up this past summer. It even had one of our subscribers listed as a male when the name was clearly female! No great loss as far as I’m concerned. Hope your next vendor does a better job!
It was a really neat feature that I can’t wait to see back, all be it in a new form … as someone said about it’s always the same when you are first to the table, things change often and fast … the internet is about iteration and communication – 2 thinks MailChimp does amazingly well
Hey Monkey Friends. Just wanted to state, for the record, that MailChimp’s social integration is the primary reason I migrated away from my previous ESP. I definitely understand that it is just one of many features — and I don’t know what you have rolled up your sleeves — but I’d definitely be disappointed if many of these social features ended just as I finished the lengthy migration process!
Best of luck,
Rob
Rob, thanks for switching. All of our other social integrations remain:
http://blog.mailchimp.com/social
and we continue to invest in more integrations that we’ll announce soon.
Re: the Social Pro feature: it will take time, but I believe it will be resurrected in some new and useful way.
Thanks, Ben. I find most of the other social features are in the category of “convenient, but I can do that myself,” whereas the segmenting was something else altogether that your competitors didn’t provide.
Damn Rapleaf. Why did they have to go work for the devil and mess things up for the rest of us?
Will is still be possible to segment your subscribers into “Facebook” “Twitter” etc users and send each group a unique email?
Extremely useful way to build fans/followers.
It was indeed very useful, but sorry — that won’t be possible for the time being.
I am for anything that connects us further and also connects us to our readers. However, I know that when you see a “gravatar” in a social setting, without even realizing it, you connect that gravatar/avatar with that person and they become their avatar. But since they are basically bland, they don’t seem to affect the importance that other list members attach to their input. If photos of their faces were incorporated instead, it could affect how they are viewed and also how seriously they are viewed by others without even realizing they are doing it. It can complicate the situation of wanting input from list members. I’m not saying it would, but it could. Gravatars are basically bland and don’t seem to get in the way of listening to members and attaching a value on their input.
It just seems to further complicate something that we want easy, free and fun as well as important and a learning resource. Just my 1 cent. (used to be 2 but you know…inflation and all) :-)
Kath
We’ve observed that a lot depends on the source of the avatar. When it’s Facebook or Myspace, avatars are often switched up to have fun with your inner circle of friends. So you’ll indeed get some interesting (and sometimes distracting) pictures. But when it’s Gravatar, which is specifically used for blog commenting, I think people are going to consciously publish the image of themselves that they actually want alongside their discussion. Similar with LinkedIn — you’re going to post the most professional pic you can of yourself.
I don’t know if it could be an option – http://www.flowtown.com perhaps? Or do they have the same problem?
Thanks. Flowtown’s great, but they’re doing something different now.
Just today I checked out Gist.com I am new to you guys and to Gist, but to see who is on where is a neat feature. ANd gist allowed me to import my Linkedin connections, working on the other ones, I think you can do twitter, fb linkedin and somethingn else… forget now what but… check it out. I hope it’s not one of your comeptitors… (oops if so) but I am here not there right…
Great system and ideal for users like us who have very seasonal communication requirements. May I suggest, though, that you turn off the ability to add SocialPro for now. Newbies like me will probably not be following the blogs and will not know that the SocialPro function is suspended until after they have signed up and activated it.
hi guys, hi ben!
I activated Social Pro and now I get, that it`s paused.
two questions:
1. is it for free? (because there was written “buy the social pro add on”, but havent`s seen a price)
2. when will a german version be released?
thanks!
OK now im being dumb i think but once SocialPro has been setup on a list wll it work for now or now.. Im confussed but I am a newbiew so could someone explain in simple speak please.
Hi Marcus, this feature is currently “on hold.” The data source is going away, and is getting replaced by some different data (it looks promising, but it’s still different). We will either find a new source of social data, create a new source, or change the nature of the feature altogether. Currently though, we’re busy making other features.
Any updates on when the new API will be re-connected?
I am keen to know what is happening with this feature as well… of great interest to me!!
Ben,
Looking forward to getting the Social Pro stuff back up and running. I know that whatever you guys reinvent will be drop dead AWESOME.
Now…as to what I really wanted to say. Can I shamelessly ask for a Mail Chimp t-shirt in XXL?
Really looking forward to a replacement for this service, it was one of the reasons I signed up a high volume account for Mailchimp!
We’re working on it!
I am new to Mail Chimp and found the FREE Social Pro add-on, and want to know if it is still operational and when the FREE period ends?
Sorry if this has been addressed prior, but my eyes may have failed me.
Paul.
This is really not active at the moment as the source for the data is no longer providing it. MailChimp is working on some other things as noted above and they hope to bring it back from the sounds of it, but I am not sure if this is front burner or back burner… Read back through some of the comments from Ben Chestnut (Co-Founder) and he will explain it much clearer.
Any word on when the new version of social pro will release?
Hi Nate, we’re hoping to have something in place around the end of April. Love my Blendtec, btw. It really is the Chuck Norris of blenders.
I just signed up entirely for the social pro feature only to find out AFTER that it is no longer functioning – how do I get a refund?
In the first paragraph you say SocialPro is going to under go changes over the next few weeks and then you say it is on hold in the last paragraph.
Aren’t you therefore saying that you’ve just decided to deactivate it because it doesn’t work and you’re going to fix it but you don’t know when because you’re too darn busy?
‘Aint cutting it communications wise for me, sorry; perhaps some clarification here? A clearer statement might be that MC had a (potentially) popular tool but don’t now because a partner messed up their implementation.
Hi Matt, re: clarity, we began work on replacing socialpro as soon as we heard it was going to be deactivated. Then ESPs began getting attacked by hackers (some high profile incidents have been in the news in recent months), and our priorities shifted to beefing up security measures in our app, and in our company. Sorry, but SocialPro (and all our other plans) took a back seat to protecting user data. An update to SocialPro is currently slated for either late June or late July.
Thought as much, seen a few high profile ESPs get the hacking treatment of late. Security is paramount, I’d rather my 150k subscribers’ data be safe than see their avatars!
Ben,
Did you check FlipTop.com? I believe they do what RapLeaf used to do. Do you have any ETA on when the SocialPro feature is gonna be up?
Thanks,
SocialPro is now live again:
http://blog.mailchimp.com/may-release-socialpro-returns-payg-inbox-inspections-ui-improvements/
The v5.9 upgrade is propagating now, and SocialPro (and other new features) should be available for all accounts by COB tomorrow. Many thanks for your patience.
[...] and agencies scrambling for alternative data sources as the projects underway at Flowtown and MailChimp were shelved.Coming out of beta today is a service that “unlocks” that goldmine of data inboth [...]
[...] and agencies scrambling for alternative data sources as the projects underway at Flowtown and MailChimp were [...]