A Commercial Break

Have a product or service you’d like our vibrant, focused community of designers, developers and creatives to check out? We’ve published new rates and traffic data from our first two weeks of being publicly viewable, and we’re lining up advertising slots for May. Book a spot today.

Also, a big thank you to all of our current advertisers, who’ve taken a leap of faith with us during our inaugural month. You’re helping us continue to make Dribbble awesome.

Making Its Debut: Debuts

One criticism Dribbble has received is that it’s a star system; well-known players get far more views and dominate the popular lists, making it difficult for talented but lesser-known players to draw fans. It’s a valid concern.

While stars will always shine in reputation theater, we very much want Dribbble to be a stage for discovering new talent. On that front, there’s a lot we can do. To start, we’ve added a ”Debuts” tab to the front page which displays the opening (first) shot from each new player.

http://dribbble.com/shots/debuts

Rookies, your first shot just got a lot more visibility, so make it a swish. Players, we encourage you to keep tabs on this tab to scout the influx of new talent. (There’s an RSS feed as well, which makes doing so a layup.) When you see a rookie do something special, lavish Like and affection. Because once upon a time, someone gave you your first shot.

Advertise on Dribbble

Looking to reach a vibrant, focused community of designers and other web creatives?

Dribbble is offering a rotating sidebar advertising module that houses a standard, 120×90 image plus a short line of text. We’re gearing up for our upcoming public launch by lining up advertising slots this week.

WHY BUY A SPOT NOW?

We’ll be putting all the marketing wheels in motion to promote the launch on the following channels:

• simplebits.com ~100,000 unique visitors per month
• twitter.com/simplebits 19,100+ followers 
• twitter.com/dribbble 3,162+ followers 
• twitter.com/wrycoder 400+ followers (Yeah, baby! :) 
• Right here at blog.dribbble.com

Interested? Email contact [at] dribbble dot com for more info.

Dribbble is about to tip off

Soon, we’ll be pulling back the curtain on Dribbble, a new community we’ve been crafting for quite some time. Dribbble has enjoyed a long and active private beta, and we’re excited to finally share it with the world.

But first, what is it? Dribbble is show and tell for designers, developers and other creatives. Members share sneak peeks of their work as “shots” — small screenshots of the designs and applications they are working on. It’s also a place to talk design, give and receive feedback and iterate toward better work.

Whether Dribbble should be public (for some value of public :) has been a source of much debate on the interwebs. Please know that we care deeply about this community and the amazing work that’s being shared. We’re also well aware that Dribbble is all about quality over quantity. With that in mind, here is what we are going to do in the very near future:

• Make all member content publicly viewable. This means users, shots, rebounds, comments, etc.
• Continue to allow ONLY members to contribute content, i.e. upload shots, rebound, make comments, etc.
• Continue to draft new members ONLY by invitation from other members.

In a nutshell: Dribbble will be READ-ONLY for non-members, and READ-WRITE for members.

REGARDING PRIVACY

We originally envisioned all shots being viewable by anyone, but user feedback has us strongly considering optional controls over who sees a given shot (for shots that are sensitive or warrant limited review). We want these controls to be lightweight but powerful enough to facilitate sharing. If members have feedback - particularly how they’d use private shots and who they’d want to see them - please let us know here:

http://getsatisfaction.com/dribbble/topics/feedback_on_privacy

Regarding membership: Dribbble is only as good as its players. That’s why we’re continuing to use the draft to recruit new talent.

FINDING A PICKUP GAME

We get a lot of requests from folks who aren’t on Dribbble and don’t know anyone on Dribbble, but would like to present their work for consideration by a member with invitations. Ultimately, we want to get that process into Dribbble itself, but for now, we’d like to point these requests here:

http://getsatisfaction.com/dribbble/topics/how_do_we_submit_ourselves_to_get_a_dribbble_invite

Folks looking for an invite can post a URL to their work and email address in this thread. Any existing member scouting new talent to draft can look here to find it.

That’s it for now. Exciting times ahead!

Fist bumps,

Assistant General Manager Dan Cederholm
Assistant to the General Manager Rich Thornett

Welcome.

Welcome to the official Dribbble blog, where we will be documenting all things dribbbly. News, new features, feedback, announcements, etc. will go here through the magic of electricity and magnetism. Stay tuned.