Manhunt Labs

EDIT: As of about 4:00 Eastern, our page is back up! Yay. Thanks!

Hi guys,

Wanted to give you a little bit on the technical background surrounding the mystery of the whereabouts of our Facebook page. 

On April 4, a day that will live in infamy, our Facebook page was removed without any notification to myself or our other Social Marketing team members. Weird, huh?

We immediately thought, “Crap! Maybe there was some content posted that was questionable! Let’s talk to Facebook and figure out if that was the case so we can make sure to play nice.” 

We reached out to Facebook, who replied saying that we weren’t an authorized Admin of the page. Oh no! 

We’ve proceeded to request ownership of the page (disabled, deleted, vanished or otherwise) via several channels—username infringement, Trademark/DMCA and disabled Pages feedback forms.

Unfortunately, we’ve yet to receive a response. 

We’re asking that those of you who miss our page (formerly known as Facebook.com/manhunt) to drop Facebook a kind message. You can even copy and paste:

Hi!

I’ve learned that the Fan Page for Manhunt.net (facebook.com/manhunt) is no longer available and that the site’s operators haven’t had success reaching out to you.

Manhunt has 6 million members, and close to 200,000 fans — all of whom would like to see the page restored; especially me! 

I’m hoping that you can contact the Manhunt guys (tim@manhunt.net would love an email from you) and help get one of my favorite pages back!

We’ll keep you posted on here and Manhunt Daily as to the status of our long lost Page. If you’re a Facebook employee, we’ll totally love you forever if you might be able to lend a hand. And for our loyal members, we already love you forever… but any contact you might want to make to Facebook on our behalf would be great.

Wish us luck,

Tim
Director of User Experience, Manhunt 

EDIT: As of about 4:00 Eastern, our page is back up! Yay. Thanks!

If you’re in the New England area, you’ve been using the Board for a little while now, and we’ve heard your feedback about “Anonymous” posting: some of you like it, some of you don’t. But never fear—we’re working to get everyone on board! (Get it? Board? Fine…)

Here’s what it’ll look like:

For our first step, we’re going to show a bit more about Anonymous posters: their age and location, to be exact. You’ll see posts that you write with a highlighted background (and the your post indicator), as shown in the screenshot.

We’ll be rolling out these changes later this week (around 6 AM Eastern on March 14, to be exact!)

Enjoy,
—T

There’s a lot of forms on the site where we ask for your feedback. We have occasional surveys, feedback forms and suggestion boxes that we’ll send your way from time to time.

We read everything.

Seriously! My inbox contains several hundred messages (daily!) from members who are sharing their ideas, voicing their complaints and singing unending praises. Okay, maybe not so much on the unending phrase side of things, but you get the idea.

It’s been awhile since I’ve updated our Manhunt Labs blog… and with hundreds of emails from you to read every day, can you blame me? Sure, you can. But, what’s the fun in that?

So, even if I (or one of our other team members) can’t reach out personally, please know that we love, appreciate and look forward to all of your ideas and suggestions.

‘Til next post,

—T

Rhode Island. Little state. Big name. I grew up there, actually. I was astounded that other states had things like exit numbers that were in the 300s the first time I travelled. 

But, we thought of our RI guys when it came to piloting the next big thing on Manhunt: the Board!

The Manhunt Board is a place for you to post quick messages about what you want, who you want to do it with and oh-so-much-more. If you’re a member who lives in Rhode Island, put down your Del’s lemonade, stop drinking your coffee milk, drive home past the big blue bug, and hop on the Board! (See, I can go local!)

You’ll see a new button at the top of your screen called “Board,” as well as a preview of what’s going on nearby on your welcome page. Give either one a click to jump into the Board.

You can make your own post, pick how long it shows up and choose up to 3 locations where it should be displayed:

Pretty cool!

You can also browse through posts near a particular area—when you see one you like, just click “Write back” and compose a message. We’ll deliver it to his Inbox!

The Board is a great place to temporarily post all sorts of stuff: the exact guy you’re looking for at that very second, the exact guy both of you are looking for to join in on the fun, what you’re doing with your left hand… it’s all fair game! Posts expire when you say so (from hours to days), and we’ll leave no trace of what you posted.

Oh, and we let you post anonymously! You can go ahead and post without revealing your name or age. Guys won’t know who you are unless you write back to them. And, when you post anonymously, you can pick from any one of your photos in your Photo Manager to accompany your post.

So, you can pick a private or inactive picture that doesn’t give your identity away to show up; give ‘em a taste! We won’t unlock or show this picture to anyone else, it’s only used for the thumbnail next to that one post. Even if you want to post as yourself, you can still change the photo thumbnail that shows up next to your post. 

Give it a shot, Rhode Islanders, and let us know what you think by clicking “Give us Feedback.” 

As for the rest of you, we’ll be rolling out the Board in other pilot areas in the weeks ahead. Stay tuned!

Writes an anonymous user:

Why on earth is your mobile site so impossible slow to load? It is not a signal or memory issue on my end.

So, first… we take all your submissions. Not just the easy ones where you comment on my new haircut, my charming wit and how much you love Manhunt. We love hearing the good with the bad.

That being said, we’d LIKE to eventually never have anyone have to write in with unpleasant messages. Until we can permanently stream beer, coffee and books on PHP developments to our engineers 24/7, we might still have some bumps in the road.

We’ve had a few people write in with topics surrounding the speed of Manhunt Mobile (which you can get to by just going to manhunt.net on a mobile device).

This past week, we’ve had a few server issues. I’ve written a bit about the ever-elusive “server issues” topic, so let me clarify.

We have dozens of computers that are all essentially carbon copies of the Manhunt site you know and love. Based on some magic, we determine a random one to serve you. We also have dozens of computers that run our databases, serve our images and feed my insatiable porn addiction. 

Truthfully, we are now experiencing traffic patterns that are new to us. We’re getting lots more mobile traffic than we’ve ever got before. Which is great news. Unless, of course, things hiccup while trying to manage the new volume of mobile traffic as well as the ever-growing number of users on Manhunt’s desktop site. That’s just… a lot of traffic! Top that off with some connectivity issues with our data centers in the Northeast US, and you’ve got some lag. 

This hasn’t affected everyone, but some guys may have noticed some times where things have taken longer than they should. We think things are normal now, but here are some things to keep in mind:

1. If things are loaded only partially, or just look weird, try to clear your browser’s cache. iOS users can go to Settings > Safari, and Android users can go to their browser, tap Menu, then tap Settings.
2. We’re constantly optimizing the data we’re sending your phone to give you immediate responses, but sometimes things just take awhile. Our site works best when you’re on a nice, zippy WiFi connection. We’re optimizing it to perform nicely if you’re on 3G or—gasp—lower service levels.
3. Based on how your wireless router, mobile phone company and astrological sign are feeling on a given day, your performance may be better or worse than usual. The world of wireless devices has a lot of variables. We’re trying to eliminate them, but sometimes, things just aren’t super speedy. They usually pick right back up.
4. If they don’t pick right back up, you can do what I do. I suggest a glass or two of your favorite white wine. Then, angrily call your wireless carrier. Demand their first born. Or at least a service credit.

Seriously, though, if you do notice Manhunt (mobile or desktop) being a bit sluggish, just write us! We’re easy: support@manhunt.net. We can see what’s going on with our equipment and offer troubleshooting for yours.

—T

It’s no secret that there haven’t been any ginormous changes to the Manhunt.net desktop site in a while. We’ve been focusing a lot of our energy on improving our mobile offerings and improving our stability to accommodate the growth of our platform.

We’ve been doing a LOT of behind the scenes work, in fact. We release new software every 2-or-so weeks, and we have a lot of sticky notes for this week alone—each one corresponding with an upgrade or enhancement!

(Yes, some of our whiteboards actually have things OTHER than naked guys on them!)

We’re improving our platform from the ground up to bring you lots of new features in 2012. We can’t really talk about them yet, but we’ve been listening to your feedback (we read every mail message you send) and we’re excited to roll them out.

Keep checking back and I’ll keep you up to date!

—T

It’s been a little while since we’ve last spoke, and we’re really busy working on our improvements to Manhunt Mobile (check it out for yourself by visiting m.manhunt.net if you have an Android or iOS device). 

We’ve since joined the Google+ movement, and have a nice G+ page you can add to a circle if you want your daily dose of hot guys and Manhunt banter (and yes, I’m omitting the most obvious ‘circle jerk’ related jokes).

We’re also going to start taking more guest submissions.

Did you have any question, rant, rave or suggestion for us here at Manhunt Labs?

Go ahead—ask Manhunt Labs your question.

Just don’t ask things that require a response (billing questions, account requests) as we won’t be able to answer them; ask Customer Service instead)

We’ll try and pick some every week to answer.

—T