The Hookit Transformation Continues…

Back in April, we announced Hookit 2.0. Since then, we’ve been cranking on even more new features to make Hookit the most powerful way to connect you with your sports. With the recent launch of our new iPhone and Android mobile apps and today, the launch of our new profiles… the transformation of Hookit continues.

First, why all the changes??

#1 – Our Relentless Focus on Sports: There are more social net’s out there than we can list, but none focus on what everyone on Hookit really cares about…our sports. It doesn’t matter if you ride, skate, surf, wakeboard or drive, we want to develop features that help you connect with your sports and share your lifestyle. All of our new features help you do that in ways no other site can.

#2 – Speed & Ease of Use: Who likes a slow website that’s hard to use? No one. That’s why we’ve been swapping out old sections and building new sections with one thing in mind: make it as fast & easy as possible. We’ve been almost fanatical about it lately. The sections we’ve heard the most complaints about have all been revamped and we have two sections left – sponsorship and the message section. We have months of additional stuff in the queue so stay tuned.

Now, on to the good stuff that ready for you to play with today. We put together a little cheat sheet to help introduce you to the new Hookit features and help you get the most of the latest and greatest.

10 Things to Know About the New Hookit
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1) The New Profile

Being the most important page on the site since it’s all about you, the new profile layout gives you the best of both worlds – a structured layout so you always know where to find stuff when browsing AND totally customizable – update the background, header and color scheme to make it your own.

Highlights of the new profile includes:
– Activity Feed – A summary of all your activities on the site
– Featured Photos and Featured Video – You choose what shots and vid you want featured on your main profile page
– The spots, events, brands and members you’re connected to
– Vitals – Your sports, bio, style and links to your other sites and profiles
– New Profile navigation focuses around your main info page, spots, events and photos / videos
– New Edit Profile page – Everything is now organized into one page to update all your personal profile info, sports and communication settings
– Customization! Our old profiles were pretty flexible but the only members who could figure out how to deck the thing out were web developers. Now you have a simple way to ‘Customize’ and pick a theme, colors and upload your own custom background or header.

Check out the full run down on the new profiles for members and for brands

2) Photo / Video (a.k.a Media) Management

Posting and managing your photos and videos is now officially easy (and even fun). Anytime you see the ‘Post Something’ button you can post any media you want and we’ve got three insane new features to go along with it.

Uploading
We integrated with YouTube and Vimeo so you can literally copy and paste the links of your videos already uploaded to either of those sites and it will instantly post to your Hookit profile. This feature is insane for all of you budding film producers with insane edits of your best stuff. If you still want to upload, you can do so and there is an option to launch a new window so you can continue browsing while you wait for your video to upload.

Tagging
Now you can tag and organize all your photos and videos to share with everyone on Hookit. Using tags, you can tag what sport your photo or video is of, other members or brands and the spot or event you were at. By tagging, your photo or video is then shared with the sport, spot, event, member or brand you selected to help promote your media. When uploading photos, you can assign a title, description and tags to all your photos at once while you’re uploading to make the process go a little quicker.

Browsing
We created an entirely new section as part of your profile for other people on Hookit to check out your stuff. We highlight your most recent tags on the right side and provide a clean content viewer to quickly browse. When viewing media from the activity feed we use a cool new lightbox so you don’t have to leave the page when browsing.

3) Facebook Connect

In order to make it easier to share your stuff to Facebook, we implemented Facebook Connect so that you can now easily sign up or login using your Facebook info. Once you have connected with your FB account, any updates, sessions or content posted on Hookit will automatically be posted to your Facebook profile to share with your family and friends.

4) Activity Feed

We’re always making tweaks and updates to our Activity Feed to help surface the most interesting and relevant stuff for you around the site. The Activity feed is used on your dashboard, profiles and sport hubs. It’s a great way to see who is active on the site and comment or Prop the stuff you like.

5) Props and Commenting

You may have seen a little fist on our activity feed and on the content viewer. If you like something a member or brand posted – Give it props. Have more to say? Post a comment. It’s as simple as that. Now you have another great way to connect and interact with other members around the sports you’re into… AND for you to get some instant feedback on the stuff you post.

6) Local Shops & Retailers

We just opened the doors to local businesses to get into the mix with our Spots section. Shops support the brands and help promote the newest products and trends so we wanted to make sure they had a home on Hookit. When browsing our Spots section you can see local shops who are supporting Hookit. In your Edit Profile section, you can tell us who your local shop is and share with other members on the site.

7) Hookups

If you haven&rsq
uo;t chec
ked out this section yet – do it! We have brands and local shops adding deals every day for our members. Can be everything from free shipping on products to 70% off retail on blowout merchandise.

8) Mobile Apps

Last week we announced our new mobile apps for iPhone and Android phones. Using the Hookit mobile app, you can find local spots, check conditions, post your sessions, photos & updates, browse members and brands as well as get deals from brands and local businesses – all from the palm of your hand. Currently, we don’t have a mailbox or sponsorship / team deals available in the app, but are working on it. Check out all the details of the apps at prod.hookit.com/gomobile.

9) Other Stuff we did to improve Spots & Sessions and Events.

The Spots & Sessions feature is pretty dialed now since our announcement in 2.0. Now we have over 25,000 spots that have been added by us and our members. By adding your local spots, you can keep track of your sessions there, find other members who hit your local spot and share other important stuff about the spot.

The Events tool got some updates to make it easier to add and manage your events (and results) if you compete. Super important for our competitive members.

10) What’s Coming Next

Everything is a work in progress and all we can say is that we’ve been pinned on getting all this stuff done. We’ll continue to be adding new features over the coming weeks and months to make the site even more interactive and will be revamping our sponsorship and team management section to make it faster and easier to use. Thanks for the support and as always, send us feedback!! feedback@hookit.com