I have two bits of excellent news to bring you today.

Firstly, we are working on a new feature that allows you to make even better use of your Retaggr profile.  We’re super excited about this - and are convinced that you’ll find it invaluable.  In many ways, it’s game changing.  We’re looking to bring you this functionality as soon as possible, but also taking the time to get it right. Watch this space.

Many of you use your Retaggr profile as part of the way you do business. This upcoming feature has some great extensions that will offer even further benefits to professionals. As such, we are currently best considering how to tweak the Retaggr Premium membership to include these extensions.

So here’s the second bit of good news : until we’ve finalized this new feature, Retaggr Premium will continue to be free! Please continue to enjoy those benefits until the new feature is ready. We’ll drop you a line with the details closer to the time.

We’re very proud of our growth so far (now serving several million widgets and cards a month!), and a key part of that has been the fantastic feedback, ideas and suggestions we receive daily - thank you.

As always, just get in touch if you have any queries.

Warm regards,
Nik smit.

Picture by Ellie

As social network and other online profiles have become an important part of ones contact details Retaggr has become a valuable personal and professional tool for many people. Not surprisingly one of the most common uses of Retaggr has been to centralize ones contact details under a single URL, which is then used in various online places such as blogs, email signatures, social network profiles as well as printed on business cards offline.

We have observed more and more people using Retaggr as a tool to aid their personal branding and communication and to further help with this we bring you the Retaggr Profile Page.

You profile page contains everything you need to introduce yourself, think of it as your definitive online profile - your home on the Internet. It extends your contact details by including all of the social media information about you in one location. It enables people to easily determine how they can connect with you on services that you have in common.

The profile page is about you and your personal brand and to make it more personal we have made it highly customizable:

• Choose your colors and background - the styling of your profile page is completely customizable, it is your page, so you can make it look any way that you like. You can either choose from the available templates or manually alter all the colors on the page.
• Custom URL - Your URL is important and now you can use any URL for your profile page. Dot ME domains are quite popular for digital identity pages, for example www.ivailo.me, but there is absolutely no limit as to what domains you can use.
• It is your brand not ours - There is no prominent Retaggr branding on your profile page - it is about you.
• Full page - all of your information is visible straight away and you can control which sections are shown on your page.
• Aggregation of common services – We even aggregate services of the same type, for example if you have profiles on multiple photo sharing services, they will be all available under the Pictures section of your page regardless of which service they come from.
• Multiple blogs – if you blog in more then one place you can include them all in your profile page and the titles of your latest posts will be shown.
• vCard download – to make it easy for people to store your details, your vCard is downloadable straight from your page.

The best part is that if you already have an up to date Retaggr card, you do not have to do anything more! We think you’ll appreciate the customization however, so go ahead and log in to check them out.

As always we value your feedback so please tell us what you think and how we can further improve the service.

The truth is that at Retaggr HQ we’re squirelling away at some new big features, but hey, we like (nay, “love”) to release things, so here’s something you might enjoy.

Head on over to http://www.retaggr.com/GetStatusImage

What we’ve done for you is create an image based version of your most recent Tweet (twitter message). “But I already have an extremely customizable Retaggr widget” I hear you say.

Well, some sites only allow you to insert images, or BBCode… which is where this little guy comes into play.

Ideal for your forum signature, but it works on your blog too,and on most social network profiles. It does work on your email signature, but be aware that some email clients (I’m looking at you Outlook) cache images for a period of time. So while we always show your most recent status message (give or take a minute or so), there’s the possibility your recipient may see an old status message in an email.

Did I mention you can play with the colors, it has a link to your Retaggr card, and you can create as many different styles as you like?

Hope you enjoy this - as always, your feedback is very welcome.

A few examples :

As some of you may know, I will be speaking at the Inman Connect conference in New York - January 7th to 9th. The session I will be speaking at is the New Kids (and Ideas) on the Block: Innovators from Around the World, which will take place on Thursday, Jan 8th at 10:30am.

I am looking forward to meeting everyone at the event, so if you are there please come and say hi. If you would like to arrange to meet prior to the conferecne please do not hesitate to contact me.

We are hard at work on something new we are hoping to bring you very soon. Yes, you are right, we can’t tell you what it is just yet, but we think that you will like it, so hopefully it is worth the wait.

Besides being very hard at work developing this new product, we have also seen a steady increase in users and impressions across our various products and for this we would like to thank all of our loyal users who have been writing, twittering and most importantly recommending retaggr to their friends. Thank you! We are glad that you are enjoying using retaggr and as always are looking forward to your feedback, whether it is suggestions, complaints or questions.

Some recent additions to the system are:
A widget for your comments via BackType
A widget for your comments via IntenseDebate
Support for your SlideShare profile
A widget for Wakoopa
Profile support for Rejaw
A new widget for Digg

Listen out for a big new feature announcement soon!

Consider for a second please, the RSS feed. What has made RSS (Real Simple Syndication) such a hit?

Is it that it is “Really Simple” (no, turns out there are half a dozen variants) . Ground-breaking technology (no, it’s plain old xml, fetched like a regular webpage). Is it because RSS readers are so good? Probably not - in my opinion, they’re still merely “ok”, but they do the job.

What made RSS such a hit on the internet was two things - great utility, and being universally understood.  Standardizing on that little RSS icon   was critical to helping people understand the great utility that RSS offered.

Today, we dare to try and start something in that same spirit.

You have many web profiles - places you interact on the web.  To know these places, is to better know you, and to have opportunities to connect.  But how do I find out where you hang out? If you’ve got a retaggr profile, that’s super easy. I can just find your card and have a look…  if you happen to have embedded your card in your site.  But not everyone does that - some use the Retaggr chicklet , others a custom Retaggr Widget, and some sites have problems adding script or iframes.

What is needed is some consistency.  An icon that’s universally understood to mean “Take me to this person’s profiles!” - just like we all understand that that orange square brings us loads of interesting stuff to read (when we should be working).

From today, all Retaggr users can grab one of these buttons and post it anywhere. It links through to a new page that lists all your profiles all at once. For sites that support it, we provide a “1-click connect” button so that a visitor can immediately add you as a friend on that service (or subscribe, follow, etc.).  Your card, with all its rich content, is there too.  You can put this button anywhere, and your profile will always be easy to find.

We’re calling this “ClickToAdd.Me”. We think it’s easy to understand, and rather snappy. (And to be honest, also quite like the geeky factor of using a .me domain name like that).  You can view your page at this easy to remember url - http://clicktoadd.me/yourRetaggrUsername

ClickToAdd.me is part of retaggr - you don’t have to do anything extra. The profiles you’ve configured will always be up to date on this new page, as they are in your card. Just grab the html code for the button and embed it elsewhere.

We hope you like this feature! As always, we’d love to hear your thoughts.

Get started and find out more at  http://clicktoadd.me

You spoke - we listened.  We get some great feedback from our users (and to be honest, some pretty weird stuff too - keeps things interesting!) about how they’re using their profiles.  Based on this, we work on features that can facilitate or improve those scenarios.  So we’re happy to announce some improvements which help both the serial blogger, and the professional or job seeker.

• Multiple blog support : Up until now,you could only add a single blog to your card.  But what if you have a professional blog, and a personal blog, and a blog  about Geeky Jack-o-lanterns ? Well now you can add them all. We go grab the favicon to differentiate them, and merge them into your recent posts. Check it out in the new “Blogs” tab under http://www.retaggr.com/User/EditCard

• Expanded professional section : You can now capture more details about your company and specify “what I’m looking for”.  Perhaps you’re looking for business opportunities, employees, or even for a new job.  Go ahead and specify the details (or add a link to a page with more details), and we’ll display that info.  And if it’s employment you’re after, you’ll also appreciate the new field for a link to your resume.

We’re adding bells and whistle as we go, as well as support for more sites, and more built-in widgets. As always, drop us a line if you need any help,or have any suggestions.

Happy Retagging!

Once I heard someone very smart say that to be successful you should:

Wake up early

Work hard

and strike oil

Our tech genious seems to have a different plan:

Work late

Sleep in the office

Strike Starbucks

Recently we’ve been hard at work increasing the number of sites that automatically attach your retaggr card. Today we’re excited to announce a partnership with comment mega-service coComment. This enables retaggr cards on the coComment site itself, and on the extensive network of sites and blogs using the service to power their discussions.

For those of you not yet familiar with coComment, it is a service that allows you to enjoy the full potential of comment-based conversation on the web. Using coComment, you can keep track of all the comments and discussions you are participating in, or observing, across any website. If you comment, it just makes sense.

So what does this means for you? When you interact on a coComment enabled blog, or take part in conversations which are powered by their system, your retaggr card will be automatically attached to your contributions so people can easily see who you are and connect with you.

If you are already a coComment user, all you need to do to ensure that you benefit from this new addition to the retaggr ecosystem, is to confirm that your email address is the same on both systems.

This is all part of our plan to grow the retaggr ecosystem. We’re working hard to bring retaggr to more sites in the near future. If you have a site or a blog, we would love to add value by retaggr-enabling it. Its easy - details are in the Website Tools section, or just get in touch.

We like choice and you probably do too, especially when it comes to matching that blog theme which took ages to choose and tweak to perfection. With that in mind, we bring you the new customisable retaggr blog widget.

You may ask, “What is customisable about it”? And the answer is “everything”! Everything from the look, feel and size, to what information is displayed on it.

For the ultimate in control, pick the “Plain Jane” colour theme, and then feel free to amend our CSS to get exactly the look and feel you desire.

Click here to design your new retaggr widget.

So why do we think you should use this widget? A number of reasons!

It looks great, and lets you display all your online profiles, info, and affiliations  in one place on your blog, without clashing with your theme.

When your visitors want to explore your content (your flickr pictures perhaps?), the card pops up and it’s all there, no need to leave your site.

Get rid of widget clutter! No need for yet another widget on your site to display your tweets – ours comes with it built in.

And saving the best for last, it lets your readers easily connect with you, by using the “Connect “ button.  This lets visitors get in touch with you, and compares the services you are using with theirs, suggesting services on which they can connect/follow you.

We have a lot of other additions, which we will be trying out in the near future, but if I told you more about them I would get fired!

As you know we love feedback. Let us know what you think, and of course give us a shout if you have any issues.