Circle Community

🎉 Announcement: We've raised an additional $4M

Hey everybody! 👋 Here's some news

and I (Andy) wanted to share with you today...

We've raised an additional $4M to help accelerate our vision here at Circle. Techcrunch covered our raise. And you can see the announcement when you scroll down below.

We did this fundraise differently.

We had a lot of opportunities to raise traditional venture capital from top tier firms.

Instead, we chose to raise money from well known angel investors, operators, community builders, and...our very own customers / creators. 🎉 🙌 ❤️

It's special to be able to add some of our customers and community members to the cap table this time around. We exist because of you.

Those investors/advisors are:

Anne-Laure Le Cunff

, Ankur Nagpal,

, Brendon Burchard,

, Elizabeth Yin,

swyx

Tonner

David Perell

Matthew Gartland (he/him)

and certainly others who I tried to tag but couldn't find 😂

This is a win for the whole community. Now we'll have more resources so that we can:

🏔 Execute on our product roadmap (which we're truly excited about)
👩🏻‍💻 Build the best community and education for folks building communities
🏅 Invest significantly in support and customer success

The creator movement is entering prime time, and so is Circle with a fresh $4M – TechCrunch

The creator movement has exploded in the last few years as platforms ranging from Substack to Clubhouse have made it easier than ever to reach an audience of willing readers and listeners. Yet the key to building sustainable creator businesses is the economics of these enterprises themselves. Get e…

https://social.techcrunch.com/2021/02/16/the-creator-movement-is-entering-primetime-and-so-is-circle-with-a-fresh-4m/

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📱 Circle's iOS app has launched!

Good news: Circle's iOS app is finally live on the App Store! 📱🎉

Here's an easy link to download the app or share it with your members: https://circle.so/ios. Alternatively, the app can be found by looking for "Circle Communities" on the App Store.

The app is completely free and available to admins or members of any Circle community.

How do I submit feedback?

If you encounter bugs or have feature suggestions, please reach out to our iOS team at ios@circle.so.

What's next for the app?

The app may be out of beta, but it's far from done! Our iOS team of three will be hard at work to make Circle's iOS experience the best out there for any community platform.

Here are some things to expect in the coming months:

Design and UX improvements
Homepages on iOS
Member profiles
More rich text and embed options for posts, comments, and DMs
Administrative actions (editing posts, inviting members, etc)

What are you looking forward to the most? Let us know by reaching out to ios@circle.so 🙂

Will I be able to white-label the app for my own community?

Unfortunately, the app does not currently have the option of being white-labeled. We had to make this trade-off to be able to iterate on our iOS experience at the speed that we'd like to — we're a small team with big plans!

With that said, it's worth noting that once members sign in to your community on the app, they won’t see any Circle branding whatsoever — the app will use your community logo and brand color.

How can my members find this app?

You can simply point your members to https://circle.so/ios or ask them to look for Circle Communities on the App Store. We recommend making a post in your community or emailing them at large.

Additionally, members accessing your community from an iOS web browser will see an app download banner at the top of the page:

If you want to hide this banner from members, you can do so from Settings -> General:

Can I opt my community out of being accessible from the app?

Yes, you can. You'll find a toggle to do this in Settings -> General which, when disabled, will make your community inaccessible from Circle's iOS app.

When is the Android app coming out?

We hear you! The Android mobile experience is important to us, too. While we're not actively working on an Android app just yet, we plan on starting it later in the year.

Thank you

A big show of gratitude to the 100+ communities which participated in the beta and were extremely patient with all of the rough edges 🙏

Thanks in particular to

and

for bug reports and constructive suggestions 💪

And finally, thanks and congrats to members of our team who contributed to the app —

, and

🍾 🎉

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Are you interested in testing our iOS app?

It’s time! We’re starting early beta testing for Circle’s iOS app. Use the form below if you're interested in participating.

Please note:

This is an early beta. There’s a chance you and / or your members may encounter bugs and incomplete features. If you aren’t comfortable with this, we strongly suggest you wait for the official release (not too far away!)
With that said, the point of an early beta is to listen to you and prioritize your feedback.
You'll be able to test the app yourself; or share the beta link with any members in your community for them to test it as well. We won't be making any announcements on your behalf to your members.
Circle’s iOS app will not be white-labeled — you’ll have to ask your members to “download the Circle app”. That said, once your members log in to your community on the app, they won’t be seeing any Circle branding.
The app is initially geared towards member features, and not administrative features. We hope to add administrative features over time.

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🔖 New text editor with emojis, GIFs, link previews, galleries, and richer embeds

After a few months of extensive beta testing, we’re happy to share that our new text editor has been turned on for all communities! A big thanks to everyone who participated in the beta and helped us iron out all the kinks.

The 10 new features you should know about

1. Emojis 🎉

You can now use the colon (:) key to select emojis, or press the smile icon in the bottom right of the editor to pull up the emoji selector.

2. GIPHY support

You can click on the "GIF" icon at the bottom right of the text editor to spruce up posts and comments with a GIPHY-powered GIF selector!

3. Power menu

Pressing the slash (/) key at the start of any line now pulls up a powerhouse selector of formatting options, file uploads, and embed types. We'll show you everything that we've got!

4. Link previews + a new way to embed links

Link previews from any website or blog post with Open Graph tags are now supported. Just copy a link and hit enter!

If a link belongs to one of our 700+ supported rich embed providers, we'll embed it for you within the post. Examples of rich embed providers include YouTube, Soundcloud, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Typeform, and Airtable.

5. Inline toolbar

Selecting text anywhere in the editor now shows you an inline toolbar, making it much easier to adjust formatting options for longer posts.

6. Image galleries

Drag multiple image files into the editor, and we'll turn it into a full-size image gallery for members to look through.

7. Native PDF viewer

To improve document consumption and context switching, PDFs can now be viewed inside the browser tab.

8. Native audio player

There it is!

9. Shortcuts for bulleted list, numbered list, and horizontal rules

You can now make a bulleted list by starting a new line with a dash and a space (- ), an ordered list with a number and a period (1. ), and add a horizontal rule with two dashes.

10. Press cmd + enter to post!

'nuff said.

🚀 We're not done yet! More content blocks are on their way. What would you like to see us support? Give us your feedback in the comments! And if you've been using the new editor for a while, tell us which feature you've been using the most. 🙂

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🏠 Introducing your new Community Home

Spaces are a great way to organize your content and discussions in Circle. But keeping up with activity across multiple spaces can quickly become overwhelming for your members.

That's where the Community Home comes in. It's a game-changing feature our team has been refining for the past few weeks, and we're very excited to launch it for everyone today.

🏠 A new home for your members

But, what is the Community Home? I hear you ask.

It's a personalized activity feed that helps your members stay on top of what's happening across the spaces they are a part of. No more bouncing around. Every member can now discover and engage with the posts that most matter to them –– all in one place.

In addition to the personalized feed, the Community Home features a list of trending topics on the right hand side. These are the topics that are getting the most engagement in your community. This way, your members never miss anything important.

And for some added personalization, you can now greet your members with a custom welcome banner at the top of your home. The perfect spot for community-wide announcements too!

🤩 A few examples

Curious to see what it looks like in practice? Check out the new Circle Community home! Here are some other examples, courtesy of SPI Pro and Freelancing School:

Pretty neat, huh?

✅ How to turn it on for your community

It's very easy. Just head to Settings → Home. Once enabled, your members will see a new Home tab in the sidebar. Voilà!

For a little more customization, you can:

Control how recent a topic must be to appear in the Trending topics list.
Set how topics will be sorted on the home feed by default. You can choose from Latest, Oldest, Most Popular, New Activity, or Alphabetical.
Prevent activity from specific spaces to appear in your Community Home. To do this, head to the space settings → hide from featured areas.

Need a hand customizing your home? Check out this knowledge base article.

✨ Ready to give your members a new home?

Show us what yours looks like below. We'd love to get inspired with your welcome banners too! Finally, a massive thank you to all our Beta testers who contributed helpful feedback to make Community Home better for everyone.

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🚀 New iOS app features: Community Home & Custom HTML support

Circle's iOS app is turning one month old. Despite it being so young, it's already proving incredibly popular amongst all of you. Today we are excited to announce that two of our most popular features from our desktop experience are now available in the app.

Community Home

Circle's Home feature is the front door to your community, giving your members a personalized feed to discover all the latest posts across their spaces. Now your members get exactly the same experience on the go.

Custom HTML

Any custom code you've embedded in your posts will now show in the iOS app. From Google Calendar to VideoAsk, the possibilities of what can be embedded are endless!

A special shoutout to

Damir Stuhec

and

Darko Spasovski

for bringing these awesome features to the iOS app! 👏

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☝ We're renaming Topics to Posts on Monday February 22

On Monday February 22 at 12:01am ET, we're planning to rename "topics" to "posts" across the Circle platform. As a result, access to your communities will be limited for a maximum of 2 hours (though hopefully much less!). Everything will go back to normal right after the brief maintenance period by 2am ET at latest.

We're performing this work at our lowest traffic hours during the week, so we can ensure a smooth transition with minimum disruption. You can follow Circle Status to be the first one to know when the maintenance is complete.

Why this change?

Over the past few months, we've heard from numerous customers about their confusion with the word "topic" — specifically, about how a "topic" differs from a "space". When we initially settled on the word "topic", Circle was a brand new platform. We didn't have paying customers, or even the concept of spaces!

But over time, it's become glaringly apparent to us that this confusion is worth resolving, and the best way to resolve it is by renaming it.

Additionally, "post" is more consistent with its usage on other social products: think of Facebook posts, Reddit posts, LinkedIn posts, and so on.

Do I need to do anything on my end?

If you are using the word "topic" in any of your community content, we strongly recommend changing it by Monday February 22. For example, some communities refer to "topics" in their welcome instructions, community guidelines, and other places.

Additionally, if any of your customized CSS or JavaScript code snippets use the word "topic", don't worry! We're mindful of breaking CSS customizations, and will work to ensure that the majority of customizations are automatically updated. The same goes for API requests and Zapier flows.

If for any reason we anticipate breaking changes, we'll reach out to you with further instructions.

Questions?

If you have questions or concerns, please contact our wonderful support team: support@circle.so

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🔔 Keep your members engaged with browser notifications

You can now give your members the option to receive community notifications directly from their browser! This is a great way to ensure they're always in the loop about important community activity.

ℹ️ Supported browsers:

Google Chrome
Mozilla Firefox

✅ Yes! How do I enable this for my community?

It's easy! Navigate to Settings → General and turn on the Enable browser notifications toggle.

Your members will now be given the option to enable browser notifications via the following banner.

If they click "No thanks", they won't be presented with this option again.

🎛 Managing notification preferences

At any point, your members can manage their notification preferences from Account → Notifications. From there, they can specify which types of notifications they'd like to receive across email, in-app and iOS/browser.

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📝 A new way to share posts

All good things must come to an end… and be replaced with something better. Today we’re beginning the rollout of a more intuitive user interface for creating new posts.

You might have seen it around the Circle community already. It looks like this:

In the next few days, this new modal will replace the full-screen post interface. This will make post creation quicker, simpler, and frictionless

And here's something you’ll love: adding a cover image for your post and picking its space in a matter of seconds. No need to play around with settings and toggles. It’s all right there, below your message.

Functionally, everything stays the same. Your post settings are just a click away.

Why this change?

Glad you ask! At Circle, all our product decisions are informed by data and feedback.

Here's a data point we couldn't ignore: 99% of all posts across Circle communities are 1,000 characters or less and fit within two paragraphs. A modal-based posting experience is much better suited for shorter posts than a full-page experience.
With this new interface, members can more easily share what's on their mind, without having to navigate to a new page and a full-screen interface. It's an easier, less overwhelming, and friction-reduced experience, which we hope will result in increased engagement across the board.
Finally, a modal-based posting interface is the standard for most asynchronous social products. For example — see Facebook, LinkedIn, and Quora.

This posting paradigm has been proven to be better for member engagement in products that serve billions of users. 🌎

What does it mean for my community?

Over the next few days, we're going to be gradually rolling out the new posting interface across our communities. From May 7, 2021, the full-page posting interface will no longer exist.

Adding a post is done by clicking the “New Post” button or the “+” at the top of the page (from anywhere in your community), which will bring this modal screen.

Can I keep access to the old interface?

Unfortunately, there are times when maintaining two separate versions of the same feature is simply too costly and complicated to support.

In maintaining two versions of the same feature, we increase the potential of introducing unintentional bugs in the future, and the amount of time it takes to add more improvements to the post-experience given it's now double the work for our engineers! This is one of the unfortunate times which involves deprecating the old UI.

But, worry not: by the time this UI is rolled out to the majority of our communities, we're going to do our best to ensure a 100% clean and bug-free experience which is proven across communities to increase engagement and reduce friction.

I write long-form content. Can I get a full-screen mode?

Yes! Full-screen mode will be available before we commence the broader roll-out next week.

Happy posting! 📝

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🖼 New customization options for topic cover images

We've added some new customization options for topic cover images!

You can now upload a cover image file, enter the URL of an image from the web, or select a preset image from our integration with Unsplash, a repository for beautiful freely-usable images.