New Profile rolling out to everybody

Hey guys,

As most of you know over the last few weeks we’ve been testing a new version of the profile with the goal of improving and increasing the social behavior on Kongregate. While many of you are extremely active there’s a silent majority who don’t take advantage of some of the best parts of Kongregate.

We’ve been gathering data from the test to figure out if it is an improvement worth rolling out to everybody and the answer has been a resounding and quite conclusive yes. We’ve seen lifts of between 20 and 30% in all the social behavior related to the profile (following other users, leaving shouts, commenting on shouts, etc.) For statsheads the lifts were seen in both new and existing players and were statistically significant with a 99.9% confidence level.

Just because we’re ending the split test, though, doesn’t mean we’re done with working on the new profile. We will continue to make adjustments and do further testing based on your feedback, such as hopefully allowing more personalization as to what posts to your news feed. We’re not going to be able to make every adjustment requested, sometimes because of technical issues, sometimes because we have to balance the needs of different types of users. But we’ll continue to listen and do our best.

Very good, I’ll finally get to see it now :P

Should be done – are you getting it now uzz?

For some reason, I didn’t get the mass PM encouraging users to tell Kongregate their opinions.

Originally posted by jimgreer:

Should be done – are you getting it now uzz?

It works; suddenly, everyone started to react on the profile change in my chat room x)

Originally posted by MadJedi:

Originally posted by jimgreer:

Should be done – are you getting it now uzz?

It works. Suddenly, everyone started to react on the profile change in my chat room x)

Yeah, yeah.

Originally posted by jimgreer:

Should be done – are you getting it now uzz?

Yes, I’m getting it, and wow the level picture is big. It looks nice :)

Seriously, who is this silent majority that you keep referencing that don’t “add people” or “use the best parts of the site”? I honestly haven’t found anyone like that. Or are we talking about banned accounts?

“Lifts between 20 and 30%”? From who? Everyone seems to hate this new profile…

And can we finally have the option to disable some (most) of the features in the activity feed? I’d like my privacy back, seriously.

Thanks.

I have it and I am learning the new layout, I just need a larger avatar hehe. :D

I agree with DRK about the disabling. I don’t really need all my forum posts, and comments displayed. I don’t mind the badge displays or following though.

That’s what I was talking about when I said we’re looking at allowing users to personalize what posts to their feed more. Right now there’s nothing in between private and full, but we’d like to make that more adjustable.

If you’re going for “personalization,” just allow people to choose the classic design along with the new profile.

That’ll make an interesting statistic.

Originally posted by MyDreamName:

For some reason, I didn’t get the mass PM encouraging users to tell Kongregate their opinions.

I’m not sure you needed it :D

Personally I think this is one of the worst moves you have made in the whole time you’ve been here. The consensus outweighs the statistics, and satisfaction really ought to be considered, especially when there is a Premium Service being offered.

Originally posted by saybox:

Originally posted by MyDreamName:

For some reason, I didn’t get the mass PM encouraging users to tell Kongregate their opinions.

I’m not sure you needed it :)

Aye, but for those who are less knowledgeable about these types of threads, mate. ;)

Also, I’m surprised that no one brought this up yet, but you got a statistic which shows that there is more activity on the newer profile. Whoop-de-fucking-doo. It doesn’t tell you why, if it’s necessarily good, or opinions on it.

You’ve not tried to get people to voice their opinions, and stray away from suggestions to do so besides the obligatory “here’s an update” thread.

I could have sworn I deleted my Facebook account, but here it is again, right in my Kongregate profile.

Seriously though, I rarely go to my profile anyway, so I don’t particularly care how it looks.

Originally posted by MyDreamName:

Also, I’m surprised that no one brought this up yet, but you got a statistic which shows that there is more activity on the newer profile. Whoop-de-fucking-doo. It doesn’t tell you why, if it’s necessarily good, or opinions on it.

To be honest, if the stats posted don’t convince you, I doubt that anything in the world will.

While I definitely don’t think you should be forced to pretend you like the profile or anything, ignoring facts when they don’t support your opinion on something is dangerous ground in any situation.

Originally posted by saybox:

Originally posted by MyDreamName:

Also, I’m surprised that no one brought this up yet, but you got a statistic which shows that there is more activity on the newer profile. Whoop-de-fucking-doo. It doesn’t tell you why, if it’s necessarily good, or opinions on it.

To be honest, if the stats posted don’t convince you, I doubt that anything in the world will. and while I definitely don’t think you should be forced to pretend you like the profile or anything, ignoring facts when they don’t support your opinion on something is dangerous ground in any situation.

I didn’t ignore the facts.

What does activity on a new feature tell you about the opinion of such a feature, saybox?

That was my point.

Anyway, you tell me.

Another thing that Kong has changed that sucks = another page I won’t visit. If we wanted social, we would use Facebook. Kong is being run by 3 year olds.

I like it but it’s too much, can we change back to our old profile page there’s too much going for me. I like updates but sometimes it’s too much, I feel lost I would like my old page back. If there was a choice to have old and new, I would love that option.

Originally posted by Thorock:

I like it but it’s too much, can we change back to our old profile page there’s too much going for me. I like updates but sometimes it’s too much, I feel lost I would like my old page back. If there was a choice to have old and new, I would love that option.

Aye Kongregate, if not an option to change everyone’s pages back for a certain account, have the option to change someone’s own account into the classic style.

You’re going to doing things similar to this to allow “personalization” anyway.

Originally posted by MyDreamName:

I didn’t ignore the facts.

What does activity on a new feature tell you about the opinion of such a feature, saybox?

That was my point.

Anyway, you tell me.

If the feature was hated as widely as you believe, it wouldn’t see a 30% increase in use across all users. We might not have the figures for what profile activity was before, but a 30% increase is either quite a big number, or else the original activity on profiles was relatively low. In either case, the improvement is a sign that the change is in the right direction.

The Edit Profile, Account Setting, the Engine and Shout botom should be red or grey, I dont know why it´s blue, it doesnt fit.
The “Points needed for next level” bar should be downside the big level display thing, it would look nicer, since the bar feels “out” of the profile.
Finally the gender, member since, location and age should be in more about me, and I would like the profile to expand when I click the more about me rather than it poping out. Large profiles look horrible to tell the truth, but minimalist profiles look very good.
( And the sort function in activity feed )
For everything else, it looks perfect

I hate all this new crap. Back to the original please.

If the feature was hated as widely as you believe, it wouldn’t see a 30% increase in use across all users.

Can you prove this? I can’t prove that the increase in activity does not mean people do not like it, but I can certainly offer other explanations, and you can’t prove that the increase is because people like it.

In either case, the improvement is a sign that the change is in the right direction.

And can you prove that higher activity on profiles is necessarily a change in the right direction?

No. You cannot. I cannot prove anything either based solely on this statistic. The statistic tells you there is more activity, but not why there is more activity and what people think. I could go and claim that it is simply because the features are novel — hell, they were tested for half a month, making that a logical conclusion — but I could not prove it.

My major complaint was that Kongregate was not even responding at all to suggestions saying that more action should be taken to encourage users to post their opinions and thoughts on the new profile format. In fact, it was responded to once, but not directly; instead, it was said that the forums was a minority, with no direct attention paid to the suggestion that Kongregate should go and try to encourage their users to have a voice. Instead, they used a statistic they collected which proves nothing more than the fact that there is simply more activity.

And you would be right in saying that I hate it too.

TL;DR Statistics about activity don’t mean shit (well, unless you want to know the activity alone) about what the users think unless they are incredibly low.