Hello again Bleacher Creatures - Brian here - just wanted to let you all know about the feature we’ve been hacking away at the last few weeks — Facebook Connect. Chances are, you’re one of the 300 million users of Facebook who can take advantage of these new features:

• Log in to Bleacher Report with your Facebook account — one less email and password combo to remember.
• Easily share the great articles, polls, and comments that you find on B/R with your friends on Facebook.

Here’s how to get started:

Look for one of the bright blue “Connect with Facebook” buttons. They’re generally in the black bar at the top of any page on Bleacherreport.com.

If you’re logged in already, you’ll find one next to your name.

Click on one, and you’ll be prompted to log in to Facebook. Next, if you’re not already logged in to BR, you’ll be asked to enter the email address and password you registered with. Pick your sharing settings, submit, and you’re good to go.

If you’re already logged into BR, you’ll be asked to choose your sharing settings, and then you’re good to go.

If you don’t already have a Bleacher Report account, just click on ‘Sign up for Bleacher Report’ or ‘Connect With Facebook’ and follow the directions.

Once you’ve connected, we’ll share your activity so you can talk trash or cheer on your team with your friends on Facebook.

For active BR writers, this is a great way to get more readers to your great work, so make sure you connect your account soon!

That’s all for now! Feel free to reach out to me with feedback or leave a comment here. Thanks.

Hello, Bleacher Creatures — it’s been awhile. We’ve been busy working on improving the site — so busy, in fact, that we’re forgotten to update the company blog.  (Oops.)  Well, here’s what we’ve been working on.

First off, we’ve completely overhauled our Team Pages because our old team pages were, to be honest, painful to look at. But thanks to our designers, now it’s a page you’ll want to spend some time on. In addition to the best team content from Bleacher Report writers, we’re bringing together team news and coverage from all around the web — local papers, official team news, the best blogs. You’ll also find the latest and greatest from each team’s featured columnists, as well as the community’s picks for best articles. Here’s an example, the new New York Giants Team Page.

In the Happening Now section, you’ll find a Facebook-like feed of what people are writing, saying, and liking about the team.

We also realized that it was darn near impossible to find your team’s page, so we’ve overhauled the site’s navigation. You’ll find links to each team if you mouse over the league in the new navigation bar.

Lastly, if you’re a guy (or gal) who follows all of your hometown pro and college teams, check out the new Local Editions. For our 39 sports towns, you’ll find Bleacher Report coverage as well as local news and blogs for all the local teams. Here’s the Cleveland Local Edition, for example.

That’s it—give the new stuff a try and let us know how you like it here in the comments section — we’ll be listening. Thanks.

New features are making their way to Bleacher Report, just in time for March Madness.

Many users have been asking for us to increase the possibilities when it comes to conversation and debate. Going forward, people can now reply to other users’ replies. Readers can also vote on which comments were the most worthwhile. All of this has been integrated with a slicker user interface.

Another major change for the site is the addition of scoreboards, standings, and schedules for all teams in all major sports. These are being slowly rolled out and integrated into the site.

We will be making continued improvements not only to the quality of scoreboards themselves, but also to the extent with which we integrate them into Bleacher Report. Our community will always center around great writing and thoughtful debate; that said, many of us also believe that sports news and information should be availble right here at home on BR.

As usual, any feedback on these new features would be greatly appreciated.

Here at Bleacher Report, we’re always trying to stay one step ahead of the game.  There is no more applicable area for this mantra than customer service.

Our little Open Source Sports Network is home to thousands of talented sports writers, who’s thoughtful articles reach the computer screens of millions around the world each month.

Not only that, but our membership is growing.  Fast.

As increasingly more fans discover Bleacher Report, the number of questions and suggestions for our support staff has begun to pile up.  Hence complacency is not an option; our processes for answering these inquiries and putting the helpful feedback of our Community into the hands of the right employees must improve alongside the influx of new members.

It is thus my great pleasure to introduce all of you to Get Satisfaction, our new solution to customer service.

Get Satisfaction is a third party platform where we as a staff will serve our Community of passionate sports writers and die-hard fans.  The benefits of this new tool are numerous:

• Most questions can be answered without the help of a human being.  Get Satisfaction’s feedback widget that is up on Bleacher Report (click “Contact Us” at the bottom of any page and you’ll be directed there automatically) allows site members to have the majority of their questions answered immediately and without the assistance of a human being.

• The Community can get involved in customer service.  In addition to our support staff, B/R members now have easy access to perhaps the most useful tool in customer service: their fellow contributors.  Get Satisfaction allows our talented Bleacher Creatures an opportunity to answer questions or bounce ideas off of each other with ease.

• Transparency and openness will help new users figure out the mystery behind B/R.  A large portion of site-related discussions will now take place in a public forum (rather than in private email chains), much to the benefit of future B/R users.  This will help newbies in the Community get up to speed with exactly how the site works.

So what are you waiting for?  Check it out: http://getsatisfaction.com/bleacherreport

A few days ago, we announced our new partnership with Getty Images that will give all writers full access to the world’s best photographs.

Today, we are rolling out a new feature that will capture the full power of those images — Slideshows.

Many of you have noticed a few of these Slideshows around the site in recent weeks. This was part of a pilot process to see if readers would take to a new, more visually-focused approach to articles. The response has been strong, and countless members have sent me messages requesting the ability to create them.

With Getty Images fully integrated into our Slideshow creator, we are ready to give it to everyone.

The Bleacher Report community has been thrilled with the continued increase in article quality over the last year, but we also realized that there is a visual aspect to sports that is, well…priceless. Until today, we had not found the right way to combine great writing with amazing photo-journalism.

This week’s tag-team release of Getty Images and Slideshows will be a huge step in that direction.

Today we rolled out the new MyB/R navigation system to help put great articles within one click of all Bleacher Report users.

The new black toolbar at the top of the screen now sports a drop-down of your favorite topics, with the latest articles displayed in whichever way you want to read them (top rated, newest, most read, most commented).

Your favorite articles are now one click away from you at all times.

Additionally, the Bleacher Report team has retired the old “Lineup” page and updated it with a much more organized and snappy design. Once again, users will be able to control how content is displayed.

Finally, observant users may notice a small but important feature we have added to comment threads. Users can now delete their comments, in the event that something goes wrong, or edit them, if the need should present itself.

Look for more changes to come in the weeks ahead, as the Bleacher Report team is eager to distribute some Christmas Presents to our awesome community of users.

Bleacher Creatures have probably already noticed, but we’ve launched a new design for all league, team, player, and subject pages. The new design features way more articles than the previous one, and also does a better job of dividing the articles into categories to make it easier to find what you’re looking for.

We’ve also made the right column of the new design all about the community that drives that page. Right now you’ll see stats on how many people are in the community as well as a selection of the members. The right column is also where Community Leaders in each community will be listed. Clicking “Join Now” in the Community Column adds that tag to your Lineup and makes you a member of that community so you can get updates and participate in all current and future community-specific features.

We’re working on more updates to the site for later this fall that will continue to improve the B/R experience. As always, any and all feedback is appreciated, so feel free to comment below with your thoughts.