It’s been a week since we launched Hellobee Gold, and we’ve been amazed by the response. The vibe has stayed warm and friendly, traffic is up 15%, and we’ve made a few tweaks to the site in response to feedback (details here!).  The boards have been so busy recently that the server has been a bit slower, so we’re going to take a chunk of the proceeds from Gold and invest them in new servers to make the site speedier for everyone.

When we launched Gold, a number of people suggested we add more features as part of our Gold offering.  One often suggested feature  was Private Messaging.  We’d love to add it, but it’s a huge project to launch private messaging as we’re not really happy with any of the existing PM programs out there. A lot of them eventually become overrun with spammers and scammers but without any admin tools, the problem is difficult to manage. As a result, we’re going to have to write our own private messaging software from scratch, along with more tools to manage spammers and scammers.

In the meantime though, our programmer came up with a really elegant way to support a private posting solution: allow Gold bees can leave private posts on someone’s wall, by clicking a checkbox like this:

The post will show up with gold striping, so that the recipient knows that it’s private and for their eyes only. 

Other members (besides the sender and recipient of the private wall post) won’t be able to view the post at all.

Please note that all members (gold and classic alike) can receive and read private posts on their wall. However, only gold bees can send private posts.

We’ve programmed private wall posts, and they’re live on the boards.  If you’re a Gold bee, feel free to test it out on my wall!

ps Just want to emphasize that all members will still be able to leave posts on each others’ walls, just like usual!  And classic and gold members alike are always free to post an email address if you’d like to keep your exchange completely private. We hope this is a good way to keep the site free for all, while offering additional privacy features to premium members.

pps You can upgrade to Gold by visiting your profile or gift Gold to others by visiting their profile!