New Features to Improve the Writer Experience

Hey everyone!

I’m Bryan. This is my first blog post. I am one of the guys who started Bleacher Report, along with Zander and the two Davids.

My focus is entirely on the Product and Technology side of the company. This means that I work with our engineers to create the new features and designs that we continually release.

This week I was thrilled to see that some of our users took the initiative to create a discussion about the Editing Process and other writer-facing features that they would like to see. As it turns out, the theme for this Spring is to “create new features that empower the writers”.

A lot of these new features are still being designed, so I am going to remain mum about most of them. That said, I wanted to offer a sneak peek at some of the big ones that are on the way.

* The first is a complete overhaul of the existing Article Submission interface. Starting in April, it is going to be a lot easier and smoother when you write an article, add a picture, spell check, and go through all the motions. We will also offer on-the-fly tips as people create their articles. This means that there will be far fewer changes for Ryan Alberti and the editing team to make. That’s a win-win for everyone.

* The second change is that we are going to begin to make the Editing Process optional. We believe very strongly in this process, and the feedback from our writers has been overwhelmingly positive. Most people prefer that a second set of eyes glances at their work and that grammatical changes are made. But there are some people who do not like this, and usually revert to their original version. Those people can now opt-out. Their work will still be reviewed by a member of our Editing team, as quality assurance is central to the Bleacher Report community. But it has never been our goal to force editing on anybody, and so we will take this step at some point in April.

* The third change is that we are going to create a place on the site for our writers to talk about writing. It will probably be a forum or something similar to that. We want our writers to be able to easily communicate with each other when it comes to advice, concerns, and other topics that are pertinent to the writing community. This will also be a convenient place to talk about any technical issues and site improvement ideas. I was very impressed with the initiative that users took in creating articles as a way to convey feedback, but I think that a forum will open up the conversation even more, and offer a permanent place to bounce ideas. Look for this in late April or early May.

This is only the beginning of the changes that users can expect. We plan to offer many more improvements, some of which we are not able to discuss until final preparations are made. Like the rest of the team, I am always interested in user feedback, and you can reach me at any time. Feel free to email me at bryan@bleacherreport.com.

Cheers,
Bryan