New Features: Finding Top People and Stores for More Waneloing

We’re fully obsessed with making Wanelo the best way to shop for everyone. 

Wanelo’s been adding a stadium’s worth of new users a day with over 200,000 of your favorite stores — small and large — so we know you’re wondering how to keep up with all the awesomeness going on here!

Well, we’ve recently released some new features on the web to make it easier for you to find top people and stores to follow.

You can now find Wanelo’s Most Followed users categorized by women and men.

And you can now find Top Stores to follow broken down by pricing ($, $$, $$$) and stores for men’s and home products. 

Have some FUN and stay tuned for more news!

New Feature: Wanelo Filters In The Trending Feed

Sometimes the Wanelo Trending Feed is just too much goodness, and we get that maybe you don’t want to see everything popular in the community ALL AT ONCE.

Instead, you only want to see what you care about at the moment.

Because of that, we’ve recently released Wanelo filters in the trending feed… a.k.a. the most awesome feature for men specifically.

Some like to call it Wanelo for Men, and yes, it’s just as addicting :)

So how do you use it? Simple.

Choose what category you want to see and the appropriate dollar amount. 

$ = lower end.

$$ = higher end.

And voila!

Wanelo now lets you see what’s trending among our 8 million users but in a way that makes most sense to you.

Have fun. Because we sure are over here!

Introducing Wanelo 3.0 — The Best Way to Shop

Today, we’re really excited to take Wanelo to a new level — Wanelo 3.0, or what we like to call “Wanelo for Everyone!”

Wanelo 3.0 is an entirely personalized experience for our users on the web and iOS devices.

Since day one, our mission has been to democratize and transform the world’s commerce by reorganizing shopping around people. As the only online community 100% focused on products, we’re solving a few of the biggest challenges of traditional retail:

• Commerce is fragmented; there are millions of separate stores and sellers.
• It’s hard to find relevant stores and products.
• We need an easy way to see what products and stores our friends like.

Our first wave of success at Wanelo was due to Trending — a feed of products trending within the community that has exposed people to a wide variety of products and provided instant gratification. Many have become a little addicted.

• November 2012: 1 million registered users
• Today: 8 million registered users and we’re adding a stadium’s worth of new users a day!

And while we are moving fast, our bigger vision is to make shopping better for everyone. We’re bringing all stores and products into a single platform and empowering people to organize and own their shopping experience.

Our users already spend an average of 50 minutes per day on Wanelo, and we’re about to make it harder for you to stop Waneloing. With Wanelo 3.0, the experience is all about you and the stores, people and products you like.

So What’s New?

A new personalized experience makes it easy to get started with discovering and following great stores and people. You can also find suggested stores and users at the bottom of your feed. The more stores and people you follow, the better your Wanelo gets!

Your personalized feed is also now your primary experience. Here you can see an endless feed of the latest products from all of the stores and people you follow. You’re in control! Follow and unfollow to your heart’s content until your feed is just right.

Another feature we’re really excited about is the related products on the product page. It makes Wanelo even more dangerous for getting lost.

Wanelo 3.0 is available today on the web and iOS, and coming soon to Android, so go ahead and see it for yourself.

And yes, do not be concerned: there are cats! Here’s one of them.

As always, much more to come! We have big plans. Stay tuned.

More Richly Interpretable Information About Wanelo

Reposted from here.

Wanelo gets a lot of press in high school and college newspapers, which appear to be thriving. I did an interview for one recently that’s print-only—The Arrowhead from Souderton Area High School in Souderton, Pennsylvania—and it seemed worth reposting the Q&A online because it’s so comprehensive. It also reminded me of the interviews my friend Dylan and I did in high school for our hardcore music fanzine. The piece is by Arianna Carlson.

How did you get started at Wanelo?

I joined Wanelo last year, and moved from New York City to San Francisco for the opportunity. Previously I was working at Etsy until Deena, Wanelo’s founder, successfully persuaded me to help build Wanelo. She can be pretty persuasive.

What kind of ideas do you come up with at Wanelo?

I come up with ideas for features for Wanelo, and try to nail down their initial details and designs so that they can be built effectively and quickly by our amazing engineers. Then we all iterate on them and tweak and refine them obsessively. An example of a feature idea would be: let members share products with one another via @-mentions in comments. Or: allow store owners to claim their store pages on Wanelo, and give them tools to manage them.

What is your position at Wanelo?

I lead the development and design of features on Wanelo, do a lot of product marketing, business development and community management, and help with whatever it takes for Wanelo to grow. My title is VP of Product Development. Product management is pretty interdisciplinary and can end up involving a bit of everything, particularly for a company at Wanelo’s stage: prioritizing, analyzing, designing, writing, guiding, testing, fixing, strategizing, marketing, partnering, managing and hiring, to start.

What is your favorite thing about Wanelo?

I love how lively and subversive Wanelo is, because it’s truly run by the users. We don’t tell anyone what products to post or what to buy, and our members post some of the most incredible (and occasionally hilarious) products.

What is your favorite thing about working at Wanelo?

I would say the team (a very special group of hardcore individuals and one of the most productive teams I’ve been a part of), and the community (we’re all addicted to reading what users have to say about Wanelo), and how quickly ideas become reality here.

What is the most interesting thing you’ve seen on Wanelo?

I find interesting things every single day, so it’s hard to say :) Today these “carpet skates” caught my eye, because they’re kind of thing I would have begged for when I was little. And this mat made of smooth river stones struck me as something that might be cool to have by the shower. These super-rare Apple Computer sneakers from the early ’90s are a standout as well.

What is Wanelo?

Wanelo is a global platform for shopping organized around people.

How do you feel about Wanelo?

I <333 Wanelo. It’s amazing to watch it become a real force in the world, and I think it’s a good, subversive, democratizing force.

Why do you think Wanelo is trending?

Wanelo is simple and fun, and filled with interesting things you can buy that aren’t being pushed on you by advertisers but simply shared by other people. I think the endless stream of product images on Wanelo is what one neuroscientist I’ve encountered would call “really richly interpretable information“—because there’s the possibility of owning all these eye-catching things you’ve never encountered before, and because they’re all being shared by other people just like you, Wanelo can draw you in in a unique way and become addictive. Many people just can’t believe Wanelo contains so much good stuff from so many different stores they’ve never heard of, and that it’s being presented with no ulterior motive. People also seem to appreciate the down-to-earth nature of Wanelo—we (the people building it) are all active users ourselves, and we don’t talk down to or advertise to users the way some traditional retail sites do.

What kind of demographics does Wanelo attract?

Wanelo attracts all kinds of people. Many of our members are young and female right now. We are not targeting any specific demographic however (we don’t even tolerate the use of that word at Wanelo :), and we’re busy building a platform for shopping that’s open-ended and powerful enough for anyone in the world to use.

How did Wanelo start?

Deena launched the first version of Wanelo in 2010. It originally started as an experiment and a reaction to traditional advertising—something neither of us think has much of a future in this century because it doesn’t provide value for most people or empower them. She also just wanted to be aware of what products her friends liked to buy, and there wasn’t a good natural way to do that. She was working as a designer and was obsessed with social networks and saw an opportunity to build an immersive social experience around shopping. We redesigned and relaunched Wanelo last summer, had our first iPhone app out by September 2012, and added Android as a platform in December.

What new ideas are you coming up with at Wanelo?

Lots! At the moment I’m thinking about store owners and finding ways to bring them into the Wanelo community in a constructive way that creates value for everyone. Also always trying to find ways to better enable conversations around products. And we’re just beginning to dig into all the product data we have, experimenting with new ways to view the many different kinds of products people have posted.

What appeal do you think Wanelo has to teenagers?

Young people are the real arbiters of the future when it comes to the internet, and Wanelo definitely appeals immediately to a lot of teens right now. The Trending feed in its current form works right away for many people in this group, whereas other users like myself spend much more time in My Feed. I think the most popular products on Wanelo and the energy surrounding them (all the people posting and commenting on them) appeals to a lot of teens. It’s a form of entertainment, seeing what products people are talking about. Teens are often the ones posting these products and helping them become popular, and in some cases they’re the products’ makers and designers.

What is the most popular feature at Wanelo?

The most popular feature is saving products, followed closely by buying products. The most popular page or view on Wanelo is Trending, which we have big plans for.

What is the price range for items on Wanelo?

It really varies, as I’ve seen prices at the two extremes, but a lot of the most popular products are under $100 USD.

How has Wanelo grown since it started?

Wanelo’s growth has been tremendous since the relaunch last summer, and it really hit a new level when the iOS app started catching on in November. Now that app is often the #1 app in the App Store’s Lifestyle category, and we’ve managed to stay in the top 50 or so free apps overall lately. The Android app is also seeing solid growth. Meanwhile, store owners and retailers are beginning to help spread Wanelo even further.

Do you think Wanelo is a good opportunity for teens to find trendy items?

Wanelo can be a fun way to see what products people are talking about, for sure. We see some far-out things suddenly catch on and become popular. It’s also a good source of shopping inspiration, because you come across products you would have never thought to search for.

What age groups do you think Wanelo appeals to other than teens?

A lot of Wanelo users are in their 20s, 30s, 40s and beyond. Wanelo users definitely skew younger than users of other sites in this general category, but we at Wanelo are not doing anything to target a particular age group, and we’re seeing Wanelo appeal to a really wide range of people.

-Sean

Wanelo for iPhone and iPad: Now with more Wanelo

The *new* version is live right now in the App Store, featuring hashtags, breakthrough emoji science, product reporting and more. Come and get it!

Build your own Wanelo universe with Wanelo for Android 2.0

Version 2.0 of Wanelo for Android contains My Feed (at last!), which means you can keep up with the people and stores you follow and no longer need to feel inadequate around your friends with iPhones. It’s also faster than ever. Get it on Google Play.

New Version of Wanelo for iPhone! Because Space Cats.

Version 2.2 of Wanelo for iPhone literally just went live in the App Store. Here’s what’s in it:

• Add a bio to your profile!
• Delete collections!
• Select a category when you post a product! It’s optional, NBD, but there is a *lot* of product posting happening on iOS and we *will* be doing something with categories in the future.
• Beautiful bug fixes!
• New cats!

. 

The next update will be meatier, with hashtags and more.

Have fun out there :)

New on Wanelo for Android: Find Your Friends ‘n’ more

The newest version of Wanelo for Android has a new tab for finding your friends. Check it out, and get ready for My Feed to appear there in the next update, coming soon!

Take a moment to prepare yourself mentally.

We also made it easier to @-mention people you’re following in comments, and you can now remove products you’ve saved (just tap and hold a product on your profile or collection).

And there’s a lot more where that came from. STAY ALERT.

-Sean

Anonymous asked: Are you hiring??

Yes! We are actively hiring brilliant and adaptable engineers (Ruby, iOS, Android, DevOps) + product designers with strong typography skills who who love writing and love writing clean, elegant markup.

Email play@wanelo.com with a note, and links to your blog, GitHub, Dribbble, Twitter, Wanelo or humble personal creation.

-Sean

New: Post products from your iPhone or iPad!

Version 2.1 of Wanelo for iPhone and iPad is now live in the App Store — get it nao.

While it’s true that there are no new cats in this update (next time!) (but note that the holiday cats are still there!), we did add the ability to post products! This was a much requested feature and we’re excited to see what weird and wonderful new products you guys post from your Apple devices this holiday season.

To post, just tap the “Post” button from the Trending screen. That will take you to a webview where you can navigate to your favorite online store and start posting products you find to your Wanelo.

-Sean