RememberTheName: if you want to know the meeting participants

September 12, 2012

Doodle is a standard for consensus based group scheduling. As soon as a meeting date is fixed, Doodle’s main job is done. Days or weeks later the actual meeting happens. At this point you may ask yourself: “Who’s going to be there, again?” The Doodle poll now acts as a participants list because everyone participated with their own name.

The more people participate the higher the chance you or the other participants will not recall everyone’s name when you meet. For people you have met before this may put you in an embarrassing situation. RememberTheName has a solution for this: invite your participants to add themselves to a shared memory list (see example). A face picture, name and job info will be pulled from the participants profile of choice like Facebook, LinkedIn or Xing. Now you can use flashcards to playfully learn the other participants and prepare yourself for the actual meeting. For each person you can further add a personal mnemonic and notes like where you met, what you talked before etc.

Such memory lists are really helpful for networking events, seminars, classes or even big family reunions. RememberTheName gives each face a name and will ensure you leave a great impression. While you already enjoy stress free scheduling with Doodle you can now enjoy stress free meetings using RememberTheName. Have fun remembering!

A guest blog by Reto Lämmler, Founder of RememberTheName and former Product Manager at Doodle.

Posted in Miscellaneous | Leave a Comment »

Why we will retire our Android app

August 29, 2012

Yesterday we announced that we will retire our Android app. The announcement triggered a wave of feedback. We appreciate the comments, and we wanted to give you some more background information about why we decided to retire the app.

First of all, Doodle is a lean company with a team of 12 people running, engineering, and marketing a service that is used by more than 10 million users worldwide each month. That’s why we need to be extremely focused in our activities. For our mobile services, that means that we implement the non-native version internally (m.doodle.com) and rely on partners for development of native apps.

We developed the native Android app with our partners at Acrea. At the time, it was an important project for them and we were full of expectations. It turned out that the app did not fulfill those expectations entirely. It has achieved decent adoption in the 20 months since the launch, but it has not had the massive propagation that we had hoped for. Instead, it created a significant support effort, and the primarily ad-based business model has not been a sufficient incentive to continue to maintain and extend the app for us or Acrea.

It’s not about Android vs. iOS. The reason why we’re keeping the native iOS app is that our partner Neoos has agreed to continue working on it, which is in a large part fueled by the fact that the iOS apps are paid apps that generate noticeable monthly revenue.

Now, we know that not all of you love m.doodle.com, but we believe that it is well-suited for the requirements of mobile devices and we are committed to improving it further. With that in mind, please send us your input about how we can improve it!

Thanks for your understanding and your support!

Here’s a quick Q&A regarding the questions we hear most frequently about the Android app and the mobile Web version:

Q: I don’t trust browsers to save my password.
A: You do not have to save your password and user name in your browser. You just sign in once and we remember that you logged in. We also do not save your credentials, but instead, we store an encrypted identification.

Q: I don’t want to login each time.
A: See above.

Q: I want to access the tabular display.
A: Use the “desktop” link at the bottom of the page to access the normal view, including the table.

Q: I want to see the names of the poll participants.
A: Click the people icon at the top to see the names.

Q: Doodle does not work with Opera Turbo turned on.
A: We are in contact with Opera and they have promised to resolve the issue.

Posted in Doodle mobile | Leave a Comment »

Android app to be retired

August 28, 2012

The mobile usage of Doodle grows rapidly and we’ve invested a lot in the mobile interfaces, namely the mobile Web version and the iOS app. And while Doodle’s Android app was a great success in terms of downloads it wasn’t as intensely used as we expected. That’s why we decided to retire the Android app in favor of the mobile Web version and to free up resources for other projects that make scheduling even easier. Instead of the app, you can use the mobile Web version on your Android smartphone – it has the same features as the Android app and more, calendar integration for instance.

What does this mean for you?

  • You don’t need to do anything.
  • You won’t lose any data. If you used MyDoodle in the app, you will see all information and polls on your dashboard.
  • To retain a one-click button to access Doodle, you can add a bookmark to the homescreen of your smartphone (see how).
  • We are going to stop redirecting from Mobile Doodle to the Android app by October 1st. And we stop providing end-user support for the Android app today.
  • If you want to switch to m.doodle.com already today, you can delete the app. If you do so, please delete also the Doodle cookies in your browser in order not to be redirected to the (no longer installed) Android app.
  • The users of any other “Doodle” app on Android should know that there’s no official Doodle Android app any more and you might want to use mobile Doodle instead. You can also withdraw access rights to these apps if you have installed one (see how).

Important information to all users of our iOS app: there are no plans to retire this app.

And finally, we’d like to thank our partner Acrea for the great collaboration!

 

Get more information in an Update.

Posted in Doodle mobile | Leave a Comment »

Access rights don’t expire any longer

August 14, 2012

With our latest release, access rights for third party applications (so-called OAuth tokens) don’t expire any longer at Doodle. This is an advantage for the following users:

In these cases, users remain logged in constantly. They no longer need to do recurring, cumbersome renewals of their login status.

Instead, we now offer our users a way to revoke access rights in the “Manage account” section of MyDoodle.

This change has no effect for all other forms of calendar integration or m.doodle.com because they are not independent applications.

 

Posted in Calendar connect, Doodle features, Doodle mobile | Leave a Comment »

New Findings: A small number of initiators organize most of the meetings

July 26, 2012

Do you have the feeling that the last team meeting or dinner with friends wouldn’t have taken place if you hadn’t taken the initiative? If that’s the case, then you’re probably one of the initiators who organizes more than half of their personal and business meetings without any help. The portion of these initiators among Internet users is 22%, which is about the same size as the portion of “loners” who never take care of these tasks. Additionally, 55% of Internet users may organize some of their meetings, but for the most part, they’re “herd people” who allow themselves to be herded by other people. These are just some of the results of a recent survey that was conducted on behalf of Doodle*.

Despite what you may think, people with higher educations, income, and job positions are more likely to be initiators. These people are normally busier than others and have more appointments per week and more contacts that they manage. Also, when they get annoyed by scheduling, they use Doodle to get quick and easy help because the portion of initiators among Doodle users is almost twice as big as the portion of initiators among Internet users**.

Initiators are:

  • People with higher education and income
  • Mostly managers, office workers, and freelancers
  • Not really determined by age or gender

Initiators are twice as likely to agree with the following statements:

  • I know a lot of people
  • I like to connect people
  • I like to organize things for the group
  • People act on what I say

Initiators use:

  • Private social networks more often (social media)
  • Business social networks much more often
  • Sites about new tools and technology more often

Initiators attend more group events:

  • 50% have 3 or more group events per week (compared to 25% of non-initiators)
  • Less than 10% of initiators have fewer than one meeting per week

“Loners” don’t organize any events by themselves:

  • They make up 23% of Internet users and 3% of Doodle users
  • 73% of them have less than one group event per week
  • Many of them “don’t like to organize” (72%) and “don’t know a lot of people” (61%)

Both initiators and other respondents indicated a clear list of things that are annoying when organizing events for others. 93% are annoyed by at least one of the situations below, and chasing people who aren’t answering is the clear winner.

Business meetings are the most frequent group events that the respondents attend, followed by volunteering events and dinner appointments. The initiators don’t favor a particular event type, but they just have more of each.

*Toluna Group Ltd. on behalf of Doodle (June 2012): International survey among Internet users by means of online panels in the US, the UK, Germany, France, and Switzerland (2,050 respondents)

**On-site surveys of Doodle users (May 2012 – 777 respondents and June 2012 – 501 respondents)

Posted in Numbers | 2 Comments »
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Doodle comes to the iPad

July 12, 2012

Mobile scheduling has become very popular, and we’ve certainly noticed this trend. Because of that, we’re happy to announce that we’ve updated the iPhone app, and it’s also now optimized for the iPad. This new app is able to deliver almost all of Doodle’s features on these mobile devices.

Download or update now (iTunes).

Participation: Tabular view (iPhone)

The app (created by our partner Neoos) is much more advanced than any previous mobile version of Doodle:

  • Tabular and list view
  • Landscape and portrait mode for all views
  • Calendar integration
  • Sortable dashboard (a feature that desktop users will be jealous of)
  • All admin functions (poll options, close poll, etc.)
  • Optimized accessibility
  • Further information on the app

On the iPad, Doodle doesn’t just look like the iPhone version. Instead, it uses the large screen to provide additional scheduling information.

Participation: List view with connected calendar (iPad)

While the paid app (US$2.99 or €2.39) offers a new way to use Doodle, our standard mobile, Android app and desktop Web versions continue to provide a great Doodle experience, as well. It’s up to you to decide which options work best for your scheduling needs.

Posted in Doodle mobile | 1 Comment »
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Winners announced in the Doodle Snapshot contest

July 2, 2012

We asked you to submit pictures of actual events that you scheduled with Doodle, and you delivered in a big way. We received hundreds of submissions (and votes) from the community that showcased the broad range of Doodle use cases in an impressive way, and although it was a tough task, we’ve selected the following winners.

We’d like to congratulate the winners and thank everyone who participated, and if you’d like to see more of our favorite pictures from the contest, then please check out the Doodle Snapshot photo album on Facebook.

Grand Prize Winner – 16GB Wi-Fi iPad and a 1-year Premium Doodle account

Bergischer Businessrun Fotoshooting
by Alf Dahl
We´ve organized the official photoshooting and the start of the run (with about 3.100 competitors and 200 teams) with doodle.

Winners of 1-year Premium Doodle accounts

They had fun in the mountains…
by Benjamin Genet
This picture sums up the unforgettable weekend we spent between friends in the french region, Haute Savoie. That was made possible thanks to a clear and so useful Doodle poll. Thanks to you, we had a weekend full of fun, mountains, cheese and wine !

60 Jubilee of the Goethe-Institut
by Ursula Obers-Kraft
Most of the 400 colleagues of the Goethe-Institute’s Headoffice rendered for a picture – thanks to Doodle!

I Doodle
by Melania Semerad-Meier
On June 20th, 2009 my Swiss soon-to-be husband and I planned our intimate Brooklyn wedding (22 guests) with Doodle. It was a glorious event. Photo credit: Marc Palmer

Posted in Others about us | 2 Comments »

Vote for your favorite Doodle Snapshot picture

June 25, 2012

We’ve received hundreds of great pictures for our Doodle Snapshot contest, and now that the submission period has concluded, we’d like to encourage you to vote for your favorite picture. You can vote until 5PM Eastern on June 29th, and we’ll then select the winners and announce them on July 2nd at 9AM Eastern. The votes don’t determine the winners, but they will be considered while we make our decisions.

Who will win? Come back to the blog on July 2nd to find out!

Posted in Uncategorized | Leave a Comment »

Doodle stats indicate that summer is over and Christmas is just beginning

June 20, 2012


The chart above includes a collection of keywords that were extracted from Doodle polls in an anonymous way, and the activity patterns reveal that it’s already late to plan events during the summer. On Doodle, summer takes place in May and Christmas happens in November, at least when it comes to scheduling. It’s natural that planning happens up to two months before the actual events take place, but it’s interesting to see that this is reflected so clearly in the stats from millions of events that are scheduled on Doodle each year.

The blue line indicates the overall global activity of online scheduling on Doodle. At the end of the year, global event scheduling declines in a dramatic way, and there’s also a noticeable decline during Easter and the summer months. With that said, there are definitely regional differences. For example, Americans continue to schedule events during the summer while the French stay away from online scheduling for almost two full summer months before they return to their calendars in September.

Do your scheduling habits match the stats in the chart?

See also Doodle stats I: Mondays for planning, busy weekends

Posted in Numbers | Leave a Comment »

Mondays for planning, busy weekends

May 23, 2012

We schedule meetings on Mondays, and they take place on Fridays and Saturdays. That’s one of the main results from an analysis of all of the meeting polls that are organized through Doodle*. Business meetings with fixed times are most frequent on Thursdays and Fridays, and events that don’t have a fixed time dominate the weekends.

Weekend meetings
We obviously don’t take the break that we deserve because after Friday we continue to be just as active during the weekend. With that said, our data shows that weekends aren’t the time for detailed planning sessions, but instead, they’re dominated by activities that are planned for a whole day or the entire weekend.

Believe it or not, Monday is the least popular day for an event to take place. Does this conflict with our idea of Monday being the typical meeting day? Not really, and that’s because this analysis considers events that need to be scheduled and not recurring events that are already in the calendar.

Mondays are for planning
On the other hand, Monday is the big planning day. There is a clear peak of user activity on Mondays, and the activity level drops slightly during the rest of the weekdays and is very low over the weekend. This is a pattern that is not unusual for Web services like Doodle (compared to news sites or social networks).

This means that schedulers shouldn’t expect replies to their invitations on Saturdays or Sundays, but they can expect replies on Mondays because people are more focused on planning at that time. Just keep in mind that you should offer a range of date options so that your participants have enough to choose from.

*Over 11 million events are scheduled with Doodle every year. We analyzed this data anonymously to discover interesting activity patterns. This post contains the first part of the results.

Posted in Numbers | Leave a Comment »

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