Second, we want to announce that we just migrated our Facebook page. Previously we were using our App’s page, but Facebook recently discontinued this option and we had to designate a distinct page to be our official stream.

Thirdly, after a short drawback, we just finalized the most recent update on our knowledge base, so everything should be fresh now.

Since more and more people are experimenting with or using our API, we developed a better tracking system, so we can monitor overall API usage, prevent abuse and allow as many useful applications as possible use it in good conditions.

Anonymous API usage is now limited to 15 requests per IP per day. You need to request an appID using this form for more. Once you fill in the request, you will be instantly provided via email with the information needed to identify your app and perform up to 150 requests per day. If you need more, please follow-up using our contact form and we will consider increasing your limit. Don’t forget to cache results whenever possible, and don’t perform multiple registrations for the same app.

There are no other changes on the actual request or response formats. For more details and examples, check out the API page.

While we may not be able to get back to all our users that send us feedback, we are definitely listening. Providing recommendations for games was by far the most requested feature in recent months. As we previously done with the “Meh” feature, which was also frequently requested, we followed up and implemented your demand. We hope you like it and find it useful!

The interaction between registered users on TasteKid is designed to be taste-centered. We intentionally avoid features that would allow searching for other users by name, age, sex, school, location, or other such parameters. Instead, for each band, movie, etc., one can easily see which other users like or dislike that particular item, and check those users’ profiles – and maybe “like” them. Moreover, registered users see, on their home page, a list of “Popcorn” or “Party” buddies, which are users that share similar taste in movies or music (these lists are presented alternatively with the “Active members” list).

The main idea is that users on TasteKid should easily discover each other and connect based on their shared preferences and taste in music, movies, shows and literature, rather than other factors. That being said, we are looking forward to designing and implementing new features that would improve the taste-centered user discovery process. But the main concept remains a taste-based interaction, because all we want to do is help our users explore their taste – nothing more, nothing less.

I wanted to let everyone know we are aware of this issue and have been working hard on improving the site performance. While this is an ongoing problem which doesn’t have an ultimate solution, by implementing a series of optimizations that we have gradually deployed during the past weeks, we significantly improved the average response times. However, these are still high during peak hours, so we will continue to look into ways for further improvements.

Also, you can expect an improvement in the quality of our recommendations in the next couple of weeks, so we hope you will continue the journey of exploring your taste, and that your experience will become better and better.

There have been a lot of ups and downs during these past 3 years. Many times I felt like this is going nowhere and that I’m wasting some of the best years of my professional life on a “cute little project”, as someone used to call TasteKid. There’s been so much uncertainty during these past 3 years that I rarely felt like I could make any type of professional or personal plan for myself that would extend over a period of more than a few days. Receiving mixed signals and rapidly oscillating between very high hopes and a visceral sense of failure has taken its toll on me, and the constant financial and professional insecurity only added pressure to the situation.

Somehow though, every time I was about to let go, something came up that reignited my hopes. A couple of years ago, that “something” was the highly unlikely event of finding an experienced US investor willing to finance a Romanian startup run by a guy with a complete lack of business experience. And that lasted precisely as long as it was most needed, until we launched our latest big website update, which included the options of becoming a registered user, maintaning a taste profile, etc. But the things that kept me going the most have always been the positive feedback I’ve been receiving from all over the world together with the constant, steady growth of TasteKid’s community. The fact that millions of people used a service I designed and implemented to enrich their lives by discovering new music, movies, books is very humbling indeed, and many times gave me a sense of accomplishment that money can’t buy.

Right now I don’t want to be too concerned regarding TasteKid’s future. I prefer to keep my expectations as low as possible, while maintaining and improving the service, enjoying our continuous growth, all the positive feedback users keep sending us, and the fact that people are actually finding this helpful. After all, this was why I launched the project in the first place. The simple fact that we are still here, online, is in it’s own way a miracle. Over these past 3 years, so many startups or new web services had their moment of fame only to see their own death shortly after, many of them having much higher profiles than TasteKid (eg.: Cuil, Google Wave). So time will tell, and until then, keep exploring your taste :)

Over time, many users have specifically requested a particular feature. While the request has been formulated in various ways, the basic idea is the same: registered users want a way to express indifference regarding a particular resource, without having to Like, Dislike or Save it. This is especially useful for the items presented in the “Recommended for you” section – which contains personalized recommendations. Many times, users were already aware of the bands, movies, etc. presented in this section, and wanted a way to remove them in order to get other personalized recommendations. And this is exactly what the new Meh action does.

Meh’ing something, by pressing the new Meh button next to the already familiar Like, Dislike and Save buttons will remove that particular resource from future recommendations, without adding it to the Like, Dislike or Saved profile lists. However, users can view their individual Meh’d items while visiting their own profile.

We hope this new feature will make it even easier to discover new interesting things and receive better, more accurate personalized recommendations.

Besides working on keeping our knowledge base up to date and improving, we are also constantly figuring out ways to improve the user experience (many times, based on feedback we receive from you). Along this line, we now present the “Party Buddies”, “Popcorn Buddies” and “Library Buddies” members sections for registered users depending on which type tab is selected. For example, if you select the “Movies tab”, and a list of “Popcorn Buddies” (users with similar movie taste) is available, it will be presented instead of the “Active Members” section.

We are also happy about topping the 10k registered users milestone a couple of weeks ago (and growing, currently at ~ 12k). We are glad more and more people decide to use TasteKid to keep track of their favorite music, movies and books, to explore other people’s taste and discover new, interesting stuff.

In order to provide a better way to discover interesting profiles, we recently launched a new feature, that was suggested in various forms by several users, most notably by Vlad Verde.

The new feature consists in presenting registered users with other profiles, labeled as “Party Buddies”, “Popcorn Buddies” and “Library Buddies”. These are profiles of users that share common interests with the current user, in terms of music, movies or books. These profile selections are available on the mainpage and alternate with the “Active members” selection. Of course, this feature is available provided the user is logged in and has “liked” some items.