After a lot of work and tense moments, we were relieved to finally launch the latest improvements to Footnote. We were also pleasantly surprised by comments from Merlin Mann on 43 Folders:

Stuff like Footnote makes the internet what it should be — an affordance for collaborating on stuff you would never in a million years be able to do by yourself. Crowdsourcing at its finest.

We launched some new and updated features this morning that we wanted to let you know about.

Keep in mind that most of these are just the first step toward things that we’re working on. We hope you’ll use them in these early stages and send us your feedback so we can include your suggestions as we work on future versions.

The main additions with this update are:

• New tools for organizing Your Gallery
• An overhaul of the upload process
• New tools for connecting images and explaining their relationships
• The ability to link to or embed Spotlights on your own web page
• An update to our Terms of Use, clarifying some issues about copyright and use of the site by minors
• A new tour page that explains what you can do on Footnote

The new tour page explains many of the other features we’ve added, so I’ll talk about that one here and we’ll cover the others in more detail in future posts.

Take a Tour
You can get to the new tour page by clicking the “Take a Tour” button at the top of the home page.

When you get there, you’ll find a list of things you can do on Footnote running down the left side of the page. Click on any of the items in the left column and you’ll see details about that activity in the right-hand pane.

We plan to add video examples and an updated introduction to Footnote to this page in the near future. We hope the tour will provide the information you need to make the most of your time on Footnote.

Have a look at the tour page and let us know what we can do to make it more useful for you.

Two weeks ago, I gave a keynote presentation titled “We Media: How Audiences Are Changing The Future of News and Information” (PDF) at the Fall Meeting of the Association of Information and Dissemination Centers in Arlington, Virgina.

The ASIDIC meeting attracted folks from organizations like ProQuest, Newsbank, Thompson, Hewlett-Packard, NARA and the Smithsonian together to talk about digital content strategies.

If my talk added anything to the conversation, it was this: Whatever your strategy, make sure that Social Media (user contributions, ratings, networks) is a central part of it.

People were clearly open to the message. But just telling people what they already know or want to hear is not actionable. So, I put together a few rules for guiding their innovation.

Why some sites like Facebook experience a meteoric rise and many others never make it off the launch pad is a mystery. But it seems clear that those who are successful have at least these 7 things in common:

1. They start with a compelling idea & simple solution.
2. They let people make their stuff better, more findable or entertaining.
3. They live by the Golden Rule – be nice to others.
4. They encourage lots of feedback.
5. They create “usable exhaust” – new things are created just by people doing stuff they want to do.
6. They let many groups form easily and quickly.
7. They recognize and encourage the good people in the network.

This list will no doubt change over the coming months as more of you help us figure out how to create a better place for you to find, share, relate and discuss your stories.

Update: Social Media Web sites are the future of the media business via CNet.

The Footnote crew had a great time at the Genealogy conference in Ogden this weekend. Beau, Donna, Trevor, Lane, and I met many new friends in the exhibit hall. The exhibit hall was a tight squeeze and we appreciate everyone who visited the Footnote booth.

We were thrilled to meet many longtime Footnote users at the conference. Along with current Footnote users we also met people learning about Footnote for the first time. It is fun to meet someone and explain the content Footnote offers to genealogists and historians. Many people left the booth excited to try Footnote.com at home.

Others asked us to search for their ancestor right on the spot. Lane helped several people find their ancestors in the Revolutionary War Pensions and the Mormon Battalion Pension Files. There is nothing better than typing a name into the search box and hearing someone confirm, “That’s him! That’s my ancestor.”

One gentleman who visited the booth couldn’t help but tell everyone around him how much he loved Footnote. He was a very vocal supporter and offered his fellow conference attendees a real life look into the Footnote experience.

We would like to thank everyone who made the conference a success! We look forward to the next time we get to speak with people like you face-to-face.

This Saturday, September 15th, the Footnote team will attend the Northern Utah Genealogy Conference.  We would like to invite all those attending the conference, as well as Footnote members from the surrounding area, to come and visit the Footnote booth.