What's going on abovewater?

New Ocean Release!

We have so many great news for you that we don’t even know where to start!

We have LAUNCHED Minsh Alpha Version 3!!!!! Your minds will be blown away when you see all the new features this version offers! Time to have fun on http://minsh.net !

If you’re not swimming yet, grab your Twitter account and send a message to @minshdotnet, we’ll be happy to create a fish for you :))

What’s new?

- Interaction! Interaction has been lifted to a whole new level. Every action in the ocean can be seen by anyone in real-time! When you see bubbles coming out of a nearby fish, you instantly know that someone else is at the same time logged in and clicking ;-) Apply a pink ink cloud at the fish of @parishilton and everyone can see it explode in real-time, haha!

- Shells and shop! Earn “Shells” by playing in Minsh and spend them in our… Underwater Shop! Buy ink clouds and scrub brushes to colorize and clean the fish of your friends, get yourself a new fish model (there are baby fish, so CUTE)! And many more items to come every month! By the way, the “Shell” is the virtual currency of Minsh. You can earn Shells in Minsh every time you perform an action: click on fish, ask your friends to click on your fish, write tweets, play tricks on your friends, and..

- Invite your friends! Every time you log in Minsh, you receive an invitation that allows you to create a fish for any of your Twitter friends. Spread the word, create fish for your friends, and then tease them by changing their colors!

- Newsfeed! Now every action your friends perform on Minsh are visible on your newsfeed. Re-tweet interesting events, see who’s playing tricks on who, avenge friends… or finish’em all! ;-)

Now, dear friends, we need YOU to give us feedback: what do you like? What do you hate? What is your favorite item? Do you have new ideas? Write an email to feedback@minsh.net, @minshdotnet us, or use our forum: http://forum.minsh.net to give us your opinion!

We are very thankful for the support you have offered us and hope that you will have as much fun as we do playing on Miiiiiiiinsh!

Let’s break the barriers and swim together! :-)

Here are some illustrations to show you what’s new. Changing the color of the fish of your friends:

Clean your fish ;-)

And win new fish models!

It’s getting colorful in here!

Very very soon :))

More fish, more bubble, more interaction!

Next release is almost ready! Are you ready to dive and apply ink clouds to @britneyspears?

Twitter Outage

As of today Twitter is still recovering from the denial-of-service attack. It is still very difficult to login on Minsh. We hope everything will be back working normally this week-end.

What’s new this week?

Thanks to your feedback we’ve been able to fix a lot of bugs this week! Your help is very valuable to us guys! Thanks for your patience also ;-)

Among many fixes:

• Keyboard problems when typing tweets are solved,
• Better error handling and notification when you send tweets and DMs,
• We added explanation tooltips on all the buttons of the UI of the widget.

At the same time as bug fixing the current release, we’re working on new awesome stuff :)) Here are tasty hints: shells (currency points), user actions (when you do an action like clicking on a fish everyone will see it in realtime), item system (want to change the color of Britney’s minsh fish?).

Don’t hesitate to drop a line on the community forum, it’s improving every day!

Have a gr8 week!

New features today and first tutorial video!

Hi everybominsh!

Today we have just put online an improved version of Minsh with new features:

• swim more easily around the fish with arrows,
• send @replies, direct messages and retweets in only one click!

For more info, watch the tutorial below ;)

Help! Minsh Tutorial

We have just released Minsh Alpha 2 with a new interface and new features! Let’s have look at these functionalities together.

First of all, once you are logged in Minsh, you can see your fish! Below an example illustrating… me: minshow!

1) Update your Twitter status: if I want to update my Twitter status, I can click anytime on the bubble button at the top left of the ocean.

This will open a bubble in which I can write my new tweet. When I press the “send” button, my Twitter status will be updated!

2) Reply to another fish: while exploring the ocean, I might well meet someone I would like to talk to! @abeatriz for instance! I can click on the “@” reply button on her bubble:

I can then write my reply in the lower part of the bubble and press the “send” button when I’m done!

3) Look for another fish: I would like to look for someone’s fish: I can press the “search” button at the top right of the widget:

Then, I enter the Twitter username I am looking for. Personally, I’m a big fan of abeatriz:

Once I press the “return” key, or click on the “search” button, I end up looking at abeatriz’s fish: waow!

Also, if I’d like to visit abeatriz’s Minsh page, I can click on her name:

I will then arrive on her own Minsh page: waow! That was worth the trip :)

4) Go back to your fish: once I’ve wandered around, I can always find my fish back by pressing on the “home” button, top left of the screen:

5.) Remove bubble: I sometimes find the bubble annoying. I can easily remove it by clicking on the “close” button:

6.) Look at the feed: On the lower part of the Minsh page, I can look at my news feed: all the fish I have clicked on and all the people that have clicked on me are listed here!!! Look at the latest one: yes indeed, I have clicked on @abeatriz :)

Thanks to the news feed, if I want to see the fish of @abeatriz again, I can click on the “fish” button at the right side of the news feed.

Also, I can read the short bio of @abeatriz by clicking on the “+” button:

Here it is!

Now that’s all for today. I hope you enjoyed it as much as I have! Follow my updates, every time a new feature comes up in Minsh, I will be there to show you how it works!

Moreover, I’m available on Twitter, so if you have any questions, don’t hesitate to ask!

Enjoy the swim!

@minshow

Entering Alpha 2 Phase!

Dear Minsh friends,

we’re entering a new phase this week: Alpha 2! Yesterday on July 13th we launched a new version of Minsh and throughout this week 1000 new fish will get born!

What’s new?

• We’re now using the Twitter OAUTH login, it’s safer!
• An action news feed that gets udpdated in real-time! Now you get to know who’s clicking on your fish and who’s sending you tweets inside Minsh.
• Are you tired of clicking on a fish to know who it is? Just get your mouse over it and its name will appear automagically ;-)
• The Golden Fish has got its winner: @requinn!

What’s coming next?

• Improved UI with more Twitter features.
• Fish customization.
• Play tricks on your friends’ fish!
• Achievments!!

I would like also to invite you to leave a line in our new forum. It’s open to everyone, just login with your Twitter login.

Happy Minshin’ :)

Almost in the Twitter trending topic :)

Today Minsh is featured in the excellent blog Mashable: 6 Gorgeous Twitter Visualizations. This article has briefly appeared on the trending topics of Twitter as “Gorgeous Twitter”. The funny thing is that more tweeple are asking about what is a Gorgeous Twitter than actually retweeting the article ;-)

We’ve venture kicked!

Very good news for Minsh! On the one hand, Minsh is on its way to add great customization and interaction features, and on the other hand, we have just successfully passed the 3rd and last phase of venture kick!

Venture Kick is a swiss competition for startups that can really help you seed fund your startup! It spreads over 3 phases and only nine months separate the first phase (business idea) from the third phase (test your idea on the market), you really have to work hard not only on the product but also the business side. I can tell you if you feel like a geek entrepreneur, this competition is going to give you the kick you need to work on your business ;-) At each phase you pitch in front of a jury composed of entrepreneurs and investors. It’s also a good opportunity to meet new contacts along with the cash prize!

We have celebrated very well this event, here is a picture to show you that :)

Last week was buzzy and this one is busy!

Here, in Palo Alto Switzerland, we’re all excited and busy working on the next release of Minsh. At the same time it’s very encouraging to see some buzz around Minsh coming from various places :)) It’s very cool to see that the Minsh virus is international ;-) All this is transforming into more people following the @minshdotnet account to get a fish on July 13th! Woohoo :))

Here are the links to the blogs that featured Minsh last week:
PSFK: Twitter in 3D [June 1st 2009 EN]
CHMKT: Twitter em 3D [June 1st 2009 BR]
SocialFishing: Self-explanatory awesomeness [June 3rd 2009 EN]
bildirgec.org: twitter’ı denizin altında kullanmaya var mısın? [June 4th 2009 TR]

Also some buzz in the Swiss-french local newspaper “Le Temps”:
Un poisson virtuel qui réseaute sur Twitter [May 2nd 2009 FR]

Thank you very much Francisco, Carlos, Yazar, Ghislaine for covering us!

Something is missing in the Twitterverse

Though there are many Twitter applications in the Twitterverse, there is a kind of application that is still missing: social worlds! I’m happy to announce you that we’re intending to add a new tentacle on the Twitterverse with Minsh :))

Alpha 2 version of Minsh will be released on July 13th with plenty of exciting new features. We can’t wait to show you everything! Stay tuned and follow @minshdotnet to get your fish :)

Image from www.briansolis.com

Minsh in Infosthetics

Infosthetics, a leading design & information visualization blog, has covered Minsh. I can only recommend you to have a look at this excellent blog!

Minsh: the Tweetsphere as an Underwater Virtual World [May 29 2009]

Thank you Andrew!

Our first booth at Venture Ideas @ epfl

Here are some pictures of the first booth we have done at Venture Ideas @ epfl. Along with the presentation of Poken, Basisnote, Neil Rimer and the 2min pitches of the 2009 Venture Leaders, we have had the opportunity to present Minsh and talk about our adVenture over the last 2 years in front of a crowd of more than 100 people!

During the breaks, we had fantastic feedback, networking and fun!

Minsh hits the virtual world and social game blogs

We’re out of the water! Minsh hits the virtual world and social game blogs!

RaphKoster.com: Blerp & Minsh: layering the web [May 13, 2009]
VirtualWorldNews: Minsh Brings Fish, Virtual World To Twitter [May 13, 2009]
InsideSocialGames: Minsh Layering an Undersea Virtual World on top of Twitter [May 26, 2009]

Thank you @raphkoster, @seilerj, Christopher Mack for covering us !