As you may have noticed, we’ve been a bit quiet on the announcements front recently. emble’s been alive for just over a year now, and we’ve had a really interesting 12 months! We’re incredibly grateful for the huge amount of support we’ve received, and the feedback we’ve had from our amazing beta users has been absolutely awesome. […]
When we tell people that emble’s an app for planning social events, people want to know what makes it different from tools like Eventbrite, Meetup, or Facebook Events. We get why they want to know; after all, if a new app doesn’t have anything special about it, why would people bother using it? The majority of new products seek to make it easier for people to do something (for example, arrange events), and are therefore trying to usurp whatever method an individual uses to carry out that task at present. It can take a lot for people to permanently switch to a new platform, so product teams have to serve up something pretty darn special if they actually want people to use their app. […]
Market research is something all companies have to do; after all, if you don’t know what your market’s like, how on earth are you going to create something that people will use? Unfortunately for us, we’re operating in a market that’s relatively unchartered in terms of research; there’s a lot of data available regarding the corporate event world, but not much when it comes to how people organise get togethers with their nearest and dearest. Being the proactive sort of people we are, we decided to do our own research (and being the generous sort of people we are, we decided to make this available to everyone in the form of a annual report)! […]
It’s been an incredibly exciting (and busy) week for the emble team. As well as working on a bunch of awesome new features, we’ve also left the safety of private beta and entered the new and thrilling waters of public beta! […]
Since launching our private beta a month ago, we’ve had such an amazing response from our earliest users. As well as a tonne of compliments about our UI, we’ve received some excellent, constructive feedback about ways in which we can improve emble. We decided from an early stage that we would always listen to our users and try our hardest to give them the best possible event planning experience, and we’ve already started responding to suggestions and working on feature requests. Here are a few of the changes we’ve made so far… […]
One of the main problems we set out to solve with emble was the fact that it’s sometimes so difficult to get together with friends that people give up before they’ve managed to get a plan organised. This always sucks, but it definitely sucks more at this time of year; often, far flung friends only flock back to their hometowns for a limited period of time, so trying to meet up with them can be like trying to catch smoke. We want you to see your friends before they disappear for another year! […]
Last week was a very special week for us, as we allowed a small and select group of people access to emble. Many of these awesome individuals had helped spread the word of emble by heralding our imminent arrival via social media, so we wanted to say express our gratitude by opening a secret side door just for them. This marked the first time anyone other than our closest friends and family members (aka the guinea pigs) had used the app, and we were incredibly pleased at the feedback we received from these ‘early birds’. Even though we had a few technical issues over the course of the week, our very first users were patient and beared with us – thanks for that, guys! […]
Good things come to those who wait!
What a busy time it’s been in the emble office! First up, we apologise for how long it’s taking to get you all in to the emble beta. We are very very close – we are just finalising a number of important aspects of the app that will make all the difference to your experience as a user. We’ve just completed a batch of user testing that was absolutely fascinating and as a result we have decided to give our users the option of running paid events without their guests having to pay a fee – collecting money through emble is now totally optional, giving the user much more freedom to do as they please! We love it when a plan comes together. […]
Following our very successful presentation of emble at Tech Wednesday in August, we were invited to meet with some of the people behind Entrepreneurs for the Future, or e4f. e4f is an incubator programme dedicated to supporting the growth of technology companies in Birmingham, and counts many successful startups amongst its graduates and current incubatees – which now includes emble! […]
