We pushed out another major new release last night that makes sharing and browsing information in RivalMap easier than ever. The goal with this release was to create a more natural workflow for new users and to streamline collaboration for power users. So far the response has been overwhelmingly positive! I'll walk you through the major changes below and also cover some of the smaller features we added that are nice to know about.

Notes, Clippings, and Concerns are now Posts

Notes, clippings, and concerns were combined into a single tab called Posts. We did this so that new users don't need to worry as much about the differences between them and to make it obvious where you should be posting competitor updates and sharing new information. Even though there are fewer tabs, we didn't remove any features. In fact, combining these data types enabled us to add new functionality that many customers requested:

• You can now browse all posts with a single tag cloud, or select a sub tab to only show posts with links, concerns, or files
• You can flag any post as a concern, even while you are posting links and files
• You can share multiple links and files in the same post
• The browser button (bookmarklet) lets you upload files and open concerns
• You can share links by emailing them to your dropbox address (we extract the links and add them to your post)
• You can add titles to your post (but you still don't have to if it's just a short note)
• You can share the same link to a webpage multiple times (we will warn you that it has already been posted and show you where)
• When sharing links, it's now easier to keep the description/summary of the link separate from your comments about it

Images and files are displayed in Post listings and on profiles

While merging notes, clippings, and concerns we also redesigned the way they are listed. One of the improvements that we made was to show a thumbnail of the first image added to a post in the list view. This is especially useful when you are viewing posts about a competitor because you can quickly see which ones contain interesting pictures or screen-shots of their products. For other file types, we include a link directly to them on the list views with an appropriate icon.

Email digests redesigned to encourage frequent collaboration

The email digests have been completely redesigned to be more engaging and people centric. We show more information from each update and better highlight the names of people making contributions. We also clearly show the discussions that are taking place around important content. If there is too much information to include in a single digest, our algorithm attempts to show the most interesting / relevant content by filtering out information about low threat competitors and prioritizing information that has been starred, commented on, etc. The digests are cleanly formatted so they display well in all major email clients and even on your mobile devices while your on the run.

RivalMap's new email digests ensure that all your important company, industry, and competitor updates are easily read by your coworkers and makes it simple for them to join the discussion.

Changes to the dashboard

There are now colorful icons next to new posts that clearly show if they have links, files, or concerns. We added a new button to the dashboard so you can quickly add a new post and another button so that you can create a profile for a company, product, or customer segment. The dashboard also now shows the open concerns count so that you can jump directly to the most important posts that need to be addressed.

Expanding text fields

Now, as you type new posts and comments the text fields will automatically expand to fit your content. They stop expanding once they reach the size of your browser window. This should make it more pleasing to author longer content within RivalMap.

We made lots of other changes to ensure RivalMap continues to perform well as our customer base grows and make it easier for us to add functionality in the future. This post didn't cover all the smaller changes we made, so you might want to explore next time you log into your account!

Read the press release here.

I'm happy to announce that companies can now track their news inside RivalMap! Every account now has a powerful collaborative feed reader that enables your company to easily find, organize, and share important news about your competitors and your industry. We partnered with NewsGator, the leader in the RSS space, so that we could build our technology on top of their proven enterprise RSS platform.

Setting up news in RivalMap is much easier than with a traditional feed reader because RivalMap automatically finds relevant feeds, like the company and employee blogs of your competitors. Our partnership with NewsGator enables us to also provide comprehensive keyword search feeds that automatically find information posted across the internet in news papers, blogs, discussion forums, twitter messages and more!

Setting up news on your account is easy

1. Go to a competitor or product profile in your RivalMap account.
2. Click "Find related feeds" to find news the company produces, or click "Add a new subscription" to add a feed or keyword search directly.
3. Tag the subscription for easier browsing (e.g. Product Blog, Industry News, Company Mentions, etc)
4. Go to the news tab and start reading.

News is available to all accounts for no additional charge. All free accounts include a 30-day trial of news. We have also introduced a new Starter Plan with 3 users and news for just $24/month!

You can read more about our new release and partnership with NewsGator in the media coverage below:

Techcrunch - Constant Vigilance! RivalMap Introduces Automatic News Updates

Mashable - RivalMap Teams with NewsGator, So You Don’t Miss a Beat

Venture Chronicles -- RivalSoft and NewsGator Partner on Integrated Content

NewsGator Blog -- Keeping Closer Tabs on the Competition

Screenshots

The overview tab shows you unread news by tags and a preview of featured news:

You can browse news by competitor, product, or label, and to read individual items quickly:

We just pushed out a feature update that improves the way competitors and products are organized when using labels.

For those of you who haven't used them yet, labels(tags) are a great way of assigning keywords to competitors and their products so that you can group them for better browsing.

Previously, we displayed the list of labels alphabetically with the count of matching items to the right. However, as the number of labels began to grow, it wasn't easy to recognize those that were most important.

We solved this problem by sorting the list based on the number of matching items, and increasing the size and darkness of the labels appropriately. This lets you more easily visualize the labels that are most relevant.

Here is a screenshot of the new feature:

In this example, the business label has been selected, which produces the filtered view of the competitors shown below:

Last night we pushed out a new feature to the RivalMap competitor and product profile editors that makes it easier to access revisions and visualize the changes. The goal is to help people in larger teams feel more comfortable adding information to the profiles by making it clear that it is really easy to see what has changed and restore an older version as necessary.

The profiles are meant to be the central place for a team to summarize and analyze a competitor, product, or customer segment. You should be using notes and clippings for research, but as you start to establish hard facts and better understand a competitor, product, or customer segment it is important that you contribute to their profiles so that other team members don't have to read through all the research to understand the most important issues.

Here are some screenshots of the new profile features:

As you can see, we actually highlight the changes in the formatted view of the profiles, something that most commercial wikis do not do well or at all!