Making the move from PHP to Rails

What we couldn’t have foreseen was that in bringing on a new developer we would actually completely review our entire code base and reevaluate the platform we had been building on. With the keen insight of Eric Junker, a PHP developer at Dice.com by day, the Flaggpole team pulled the plug on our PHP-based application and has been hard at work rewriting everything for Ruby on Rails. What we’ve ended up with is a snappier application that has a great future ahead of it.

The future of our application is what brings us to this post. While our team has been heads down on this new version of Flaggpole for the past several months, we’ve still got a long way to go. That’s where you (or someone you know) comes in.

Calling all Rails developers!

If you are a developer with Rails (or another dynamic language) experience that is looking for a challenge and a chance to be part of something exciting, we’d like to talk to you. We would love to add another developer (or two!) to our growing team in an effort to speed up the development process and get our application out to our users quicker.

If this sort of thing sounds interesting to you, please review the “official” requirements below and send an email to aaron@flaggpole.com.

Seeking Rails/Web Developer experience

Flaggpole is a place-based social network that connects people through important places. This startup, founded by employees at Amazon and Google, is seeking a web developer interested in helping a new startup get off the ground.

Skills needed:

• Ruby on Rails
• MySQL
• jQuery Javascript
• CSS

The team at Flaggpole has members in both Seattle, Washington and Des Moines, Iowa, and would prefer to work with someone located in either of these cities.

A few hours ago we began another systematic update of all the Twitter accounts that are maintained by Flaggpole. When I say all the accounts, I’m not just talking about two or three (we currently use @flaggpole for talking with fans and @flaggpolebot to send direct message notifications), but rather the 32,000 other accounts in our stable, covering most of the zip codes in the United States.

That’s a lot of Twitter accounts

How did we end up with the keys to over 30,000 Twitter accounts? The story starts back in January of this year, when our team started talking about how Flaggpole could interact with Twitter. In one of our scenarios, we hoped that Flaggpole and/or Flaggpole users could leverage these zip code Twitter accounts to help other people discover useful information that was relevant to where they lived. If someone followed their zip code (like @50309 for Des Moines), they could easily stay on top of notifications pertaining to their area.

While we haven’t yet begun to utilize these accounts (we’re still a bit fuzzy on the best way to use these accounts), we do have to post at least one tweet every six months to keep the accounts active on Twitter’s system.

So, a few hours ago, Jerry set up the API-based submission system to start tweeting through each of our accounts. If you search Twitter for “flaggpole,” you can see the results streaming in with roughly 15 new updates every 15 seconds. At that rate, the process should take almost 9 hours to finish with all of the accounts.

Always accepting feedback

If you have thoughts about how these zip code accounts on Twitter could be used to best serve the people living there, please leave a comment below. You can also send your ideas to feedback@flaggpole.com if you prefer that method.

In the meantime, please follow the zip code account for your area and ask your friends to do the same. Think of it as a rudimentary way to find the Twitter users in your area (check to see who is following the account).

Now that we have enough code in place to prove the functionality of our site, we are looking for an additional web developer who can help take us to the next level – fast.

For the official details, see the posting below:

Seeking PHP developer, Code Igniter experience

Flaggpole is a place-based social network that connects people through important places. This startup, founded by employees at Amazon and Google, is seeking a web developer interested in helping a new startup get off the ground.

Skills needed:

• PHP
• Code Igniter framework
• MySQL
• jQuery Javascript
• CSS

The team at Flaggpole has members in both Seattle, Washington and Des Moines, Iowa, and would prefer to work with someone located in either of these cities.

If you are interested in working with us, please email your credentials to feedback[at]flaggpole.com

“The decision is totally mutual and utterly amicable. Everyone is very proud of the work we’ve done together.”

The band that originally formed in Seattle, Washington in 1992 released three albums and played hundreds of shows over the course of their time together.

“Rock bands have life spans, and Harvey Danger’s has been longer, and more eventful, than even we would have predicted.”

Since starting as the Community Manager for Flaggpole, I’ve found myself turning to the single by Harvey Danger as an anthem for jamming out work and getting things done.

If you find yourself missing the raucous tune, you can still pick up their debut album from Amazon, Where Have All The Merrymakers Gone? Otherwise do a quick search on Twitter and you’re bound to find a link to Blip.fm where you can hear the song in full.

We wish the band well in their future endeavors and will continue rocking out to their iconic track by which we share the same name.

Nate explained the basic concept of Flaggpole and how we are utilizing integration with Twitter to notify people of things happening in their neighborhood.

Twitter Road Trip is a project by Mark Simonds, a recently laid off web developer and social media strategist. Mark was laid off in March 2009 and is using his newfound spare time to road trip across the nation interviewing people and companies who are on Twitter and have interesting stories to tell.

Our testing and feedback process

Since launching this spring, our service has undergone constant development  as we continue building out features. Our limited alpha testing phase has included sending out invites to friends, family and close contacts, while also allowing them to invite select individuals to accompany them inside. Upon being selected to participate in the Launchpad Session at 140: The Twitter Conference, we’ve actually had to move our testing phase forward into an expanded alpha, where we’re letting in even more users (mostly conference goers).

We’re still in Alpha

Though we’re letting in more users, the service is still very much in the alpha stage. Our functionality is developed enough for people to build communities and start having conversations, but our Twitter integration is just seeing its first iteration. That being said, we are also expecting to see some bugs here and there, or a feature that might not be fully functional just yet.

Beta is coming

Locked deep inside Flaggpole headquarters we’ve got a development plan mapping out all of the features and functions we see as part of the final product. In the near future you will see a robust mobile application and integration with Facebook Connect. After we get the bulk of our basic features running, then we’ll announce the public beta and allow self-activated accounts.

Please submit feedback and suggestions

If you have recommendations about features we should incorporate or have bugs to report, please use our Flaggpole Seattle community or submit via feedback@flaggpole.com.

140: The Twitter Conference

140 is a Twitter-focused conference organized by the Parnassus Group, taking place May 26-27 at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, California. Parnassus is bringing in the top industry gurus to discuss all things Twitter, from understanding its business value to exploring what makes a great Twitter app.

While the conference is largely focused on panel discussions and keynote speakers, there is also a special portion of the conference dedicated to the Launchpad Session, where eight presenting applications will have five minutes each to demo their product and pitch their idea.

In good company with seven other applications

Flaggpole was selected as one of those eight finalists and has been given a chance to participate. One of our co-founders, Nate Heinrich, will be giving our presentation to event attendees. If you’ve not yet registered on Flaggpole, this will be a great time for you to learn more about our platform.

If you are a user on the site, this presentation will still be beneficial to you, as it should outline where the future of Flaggpole is headed and what features are on the near horizon.

We look forward to presenting during the launchpad session and are excited about getting to know the conference attendees. If you see Nate walking around, please grab him and introduce yourself.