About the legal statement

by irenet - May 14, 2009

For the purpose of clarity, we’ve performed some minor tweaks on 11870.com’s legal statement. In order to specifically address the issue of who owns the information you post on 11870.com, we’ve added this paragraph:

“11870.com guarantees to the User that it has legitimate and exclusive proprietorship or full authority to dispose of the contents that are made available through the website”.

This means that when someone adds a review, picture or video to 11870.com they are granting us the rights to distribute the content under the conditions stated in the document. Still that person remains the exclusive owner of these contents and is free to use their reviews, pictures and media as they see fit.

We’ve also included a small change relative to the way 11870.com can distribute this information, by specifying the possibility of printed matter as a form of reproduction and distribution. Like we did with Los Imprescindibles (read blog entry or download the guide).

We hope these minor changes  will make the agreement easier to read and interpret. Of course if you have any further questions, you’re more than welcome to forward them to us.

categories: general

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11870.com welcomes Vocento as new shareholder

by irenet - May 8, 2009

Today is a very important day for us. 11870.com has admitted Vocento into its group of shareholders, they participate in 33 percent. The remaining 67 percent still belongs to the same investors and the team that took part in the creation of this project. Gómez-Acebo & Pombo, have provided us with legal counsel during the whole process.

All the publicly available information regarding this operation can be found in the following press release:

• Vocento joins 11870.com to lead the market for leisure and directories on the Net (official press release in English)
• Vocento entra en 11870.com para liderar el mercado de ocio y directorios en la Red (official press release in Spanish)

From a businesses point of view, having this new shareholder on board consolidates us as a robust and stable project. It allows us to provide the project with enough funds so as to reach the moment in which our income exceeds our expenses. Having BBK and Vocento as significant shareholders brings us a measure of security and stability in these uncertain times.

For our users and visitors, this transaction will be beneficial:

• We’ll develop the projects we had in mind in a lot less time; we’ll also be able to make 11870.com content available to more people than ever before.
• We’ll reach new users whose experience will show us places and services in areas where we weren’t well known up to now.
• Our estimates services will also be more accessible thanks to the influence of Vocento‘s regional and national media.

There are two points that we would like to emphasize, these matters are important to us:

• Content will still belong to the user that uploaded it: everything a user has saved to 11870.com will continue on his or her 11870.com profile and remain their property. The only difference now is that more people will be able to see it.
• We’re still the same people: the team that has been in charge of the company from the get-go stays on board, there will be no changes or additions but those brought about by the growth and improvement of 11870.com. We’re the same group of people, with the philosophy, style and essence that many of our users and visitors are familiar with.

We’re all pleased and motivated by the new stage we enter today. We look forward to proving our words with actions and presenting you with new developments that we are very excited about. Our dream is to offer users and visitors one of the best websites possible.

categories: general, news

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Some things you don’t want to miss

by irenet - April 23, 2009

… like a celebration. We are celebrating our recent 2nd anniversary and the fact that we’ve  reached 100.000 reviews.

Today  –which happens to be Sant Jordi (St. George) in Catalonia, where the gift of a book is traditional on this day– we have a gift for all our users: Los Imprescindibles de 11870.com. The book is a guide of ‘indispensable’ or ‘essential’ places to visit in Madrid and Barcelona, as well as quick lists of what 11870.com inhabitants in Seville, Bilbao, Saragossa and Valencia have saved the most.

It’s basically a book full of cool places you shouldn’t miss, according to the people on 11870.com. The guide is in Spanish, but even if you don’t speak much of the language, you should have a look at it. We’ve kept it simple, and easy to browse. Plus, we believe that the people who wrote it know their stuff.

The contents are just the tip of the iceberg of what people are sharing on 11870.com, with extracts from 639 reviews and 580 pictures of 321 services, submitted by 436 users, plus maps, addresses, phone numbers…. Selecting 639 out of 100.000 reviews was a tough job, but it was worth it! We are very happy with the results and hope you all are too.

* Download Los Imprescindibles de 11870.com

* See some more pictures of the book

categories: events, general, how to's, new!, press

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11870.com featured in Online Communities Handbook

by irenet - March 18, 2009

Published by New Riders, Online Communities Handbook, is a practical guide to creating and nurturing web-based communities. Amongst the very interesting real-world examples analyzed by authors Anna Buss and Nancy Strauss, there is a section devoted to 11870.com. The in-depth interview in this section touches on several aspects of our project.

The book is available through Amazon.com and, apart from providing a little insight into 11870.com, is a helpful reference if you’re interested in the field. Be sure to check out their website for more information on the book and its authors.

Nancy kindly dedicated a copy of the book to the 11870.com team:

categories: general, press

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Adding a service before anyone else

by irenet - February 5, 2009

Sometimes the services you’re looking for don’t appear on 11870.com… yet! But remember, you can add your favorite services to the directory easily. Whether it’s to share with friends, or to keep track of where you’ve been, it can be done very quickly. Here’s how:

• When you’re logged in, clicking on add a service anywhere will take you to a form page. Just fill out the name of the business and the city it’s in, select the country as well. Then click on save.

• We often have the basic contact and address for the business. So the next screen is a list of possible matches for the service. Click on the business or on add it, if the business you wanted isn’t listed.

• If the service was listed, the form on the next screen is already filled out for you.  Is everything correct? Make sure, because the only way you’ll be able to change this type of information later will be by getting in touch with us.

• Clicking on add here will take you to the usual form page, where you can add a review, pictures, videos, tags, categories, etc, to the listing. You don’t have to though, clicking on save is enough to add it to your page and officially discover the service.

Apart from the personal satisfaction and good karma that come from tipping other’s off to great places through 11870.com, every time someone sees the page for the service they’ll know you were the first to comment on it thanks to the orange ribbon icon.

If you’ve made any mistakes filling out objective data (address, website, etc) for a service, just let us know and we’ll change it for you.

categories: general, how to's

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2008

by irenet - December 31, 2008

Looking back, it’s been a busy and exciting year at 11870.com. Though we’ve kept you posted through newsletters and this blog, it’s a good time to summarize a few of this year’s highlights…

2008 was the year we turned 1, our first anniversary! We held a party to celebrate the beginning of our second year in action, which we can now say was marked by a progression that led to the end of our beta phase.

The new iteration in March was only the beginning: 2008 saw the release of a lighter mobile-friendly version of 11870.com and the possibility of text-messaging a service to a cell phone from the site. Extended map features enhanced by Street View and pictures of the location were only the beginning of the geographical development of the site: the way you explore a city on 11870.com has changed substantially this year. We owe most of the inspiration for these changes to the feedback of users, by e-mail, twitter, blog comments… and visits! We’ve even interviewed some of our most singular inhabitants to bring you all a little closer, and satisfy our own curiosity.

Thanks to user’s recommendations we were able to pinpoint the 500 most popular places in Madrid and award them a distinction which they proudly display. Our enthusiasm was matched by the press, this year we’ve been featured in newspapers and even on TV a couple of times. We have quite a set of press clippings to prove it. Other places we were delighted to see 11870.com features were Prototype‘s homepage and Firefox.

And speaking of media, in addition to the pictures and videos added by users, now you can view over 1.000 restaurant menus and include youtube and vimeo videos in the page for a service.

Over and over this year we’ve been surprised by great ideas in the form of mashups, some of them award winning, that find new uses for all this information. Our API is being used in projects across the net and with tools like Android and Search Monkey.

So that’s it, but not all, for 2008. There’s so much more we’d like to tell you about, like all the cool things we have in store for 2009. But most of all, we want to thank all of the people that have accompanied us this year and helped us grow and improve day by day. Happy New Year!

categories: general

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In English, at last!

by irenet - April 30, 2008

Here’s a place for you to catch up on all things 11870.com: our projects, events, press clippings, random office stuff and any other updates we think you might get a kick out of. Like in the Spanish version, we’ll be featuring all kinds of stuff: from advanced techie issues (e.g. our API), tips and tricks for those of you who know your way around here, and anything fun we see going on with us our with users…

Feel free to tip us off to anything you’d like to read about here.

categories: general

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