Monday, March 23, 2009

Ex-Mashable Blogger Likes The New PimpMyNews [SXSW Interview]

When we first launched about 15 months ago, we considered ourselves very lucky to receive dozens of positive reviews in the press. However, a critical review by Mashable’s Mark “Rizzn” Hopkins led to a “Eureka” moment, which helped us improve our talking mobile news service.

Mark’s review, titled “PimpMyNews: Fun For 10 Minutes,” cited several positive features, but his "verdict" was that, without significant enhancements, people might not be able to listen to the service for an extended period of time.

If you keep up with this blog, or use PimpMyNews, you’ve probably noticed that we’ve released a constant stream of enhancements and new products over the past year. These enhancements are based on your feedback, and feedback from Mark, and other members of the press.


A Chance Meeting with Mark...
Coincidentally, just last week, I ran into Mark at SXSW in Austin. And, when I introduced myself as “one of the founders of PimpMyNews,” Mark was clearly apprehensive. He was concerned that we might have been offended by his review.

After assuring Mark that we took his feedback from 15 months ago to heart, and used it to improve our service, the “tension” vanished. Then, after showing him how far we’ve come with our new iPhone app, he called PimpMyNews “a really great service.”

Mark was intrigued to learn that users of the new PimpMyNews iPhone app use the service for a lot longer than 10 minutes. (Our latest metrics show users spend over 30 minutes per day using PimpMyNews, significantly more time than people spend on the average text news site, according to Google).

Please check out Mark’s interview of us below. [we apologize for the audio and video quality, as it was done “impromptu” on a noisy, sun lit balcony at SXSW]








You can download the new iPhone app on The App Store Here.

We would love to hear your feedback. What would you like to see in the next version of PimpMyNews? [Leave your comments below, or email suggestions@PimpMyNews.com ]

UPDATE: Mark has posted his take on our meeting on his blog here

Note: Mark Hopkins now blogs for John Furrier's Silicon Angle blog, covering "The Social Web and Tech Innovation."

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