Maintenance Tonight (9 PM PST)

Hey all,

We’ve got a scheduled maintenance window of approximately 2 hours this evening at 9 PM PST. Here’s a quick rundown of what will be new and improved once we’re back up:

• 1st round of Facebook integration - push blips to your Facebook profile using Facebook Connect. The next round will have support for finding friends and deeper integration from the Facebook side of things.
• Improved services interface - we’ll tell you when there’s connection issues with your integrations.
• Changes to our contact importer scripts to prevent accidental sending of mass invites.
• A smattering of bug fixes.

We’re going to start sending out newsletters soon as well. The initial one will be the first of what will become monthly installments. We’ve also got plans for other small emails such as tips and tricks for how to get the most out of Blip.fm. In preparation for this, we’ve added a preference for newsletters on your settings page so make sure to update that if you don’t want to hear from us on occasion.

Thanks,
Yan and Ian

Blip.fm is a Twiistup Showoff

Blip.fm was selected as the final Twiistup Showoff to present at the Twiistup Conference next week in Los Angeles. Earlier today, Twiistup congratulated us and tweeted that Blip.fm “absolutely blew up Twitter.”  We also heard that we drove so much traffic to the event page that we temporarily took down the server.

We think it’s really important to give props to the people that made it happen for us: YOU. There were thousands of votes from the Blip.fm community, you guys seriously rocked this contest. Brian, Ian, Yan, and I can’t thank you enough for your support in voting for us and getting your networks to participate.  We would like to especially recognize @briangreene, @evablue, and @daretoeatapeach.  These guys are a few of our most dedicated blippers and were especially thoughtful and active in helping us promote this event.

We said we would give 100 credits to five of the blippers who supported us by voting on Twitter, selected at random, from the thousands of tweets generated during the contest. Here are the lucky duckies:

@dojodub
@Simchabe
@mrsblythe
@cynti
@PsychoSid

So what’s going on at the Twiistup Conference?

Blip.fm will be presenting next week on Thursday, July 30, 2009 at the Universal Hilton in Los Angeles.  You can get tickets here.  It’s going to be a great event connecting people from technology, media, and entertainment.  Here’s a bit more from the Twiistup site:

“Our events features an eclectic stage agenda representing leading innovators and 10 startups chosen to ‘showoff’ their products & services to influential bloggers, fellow tech-heads, investors, the media and those interested in learning about what’s hot in tech.

Unlike traditional conferences, Twiistup mixes it up with tunes, video, beverages, swag and the unexpected.”

The address is:

Universal Hilton
555 Universal Hollywood Drive
Universal City, CA, USA

We’ll be wearing our Blip.fm swag so please say hello if you see us.

Thanks again,

Jeff, Brian, Ian, and Yan