There’s been a lot of action at Critiki this past year.

It was a year ago yesterday that I launched the “new” Critiki. It was the same old site, of course, but with a facelift to make it easier to use, especially on mobile devices. And it worked! The day I announced that Critiki was new-and-improved, there was a huge spike in traffic from people checking it out, one of those nice hockey stick graph events. BOOM. After that initial one-day spike, traffic was up about 20-30%, and I expected it to settle down to a more modest long-term increase in use. That’s not what happened. Critiki’s traffic kept steadily increasing throughout the last year. It was up 40-50%, then 60-70%, climbing, climbing… and now the last month or two, use of the site has been up 70-85% over the last year. Today’s everyday, normal traffic on Critiki is now as high as last year’s one-day hockey-stick spike, and much higher than the initial 20-30% increase in use. WOW! I love building Critiki, and I love that you folks are finding it useful.

I want to keep making it more useful for you. So, here comes another improvement: Notifications. This is going to make it much easier for you to keep your eyes on the new activity relevant to you on Critiki. Critiki will now notify you when:

• Pictures you’ve added have been approved
• An upcoming visit is added to a location you’re following
• An upcoming visit you’re following is changed or cancelled
• Someone replies to your upcoming visit
• Someone replies to your reply on an upcoming visit
• … and more to come!

Notifications show up as a little red badge on your profile photo in the upper right. Then you know to go to your Notifications page and catch up! Some of these notifications also send you an email, while others don’t. Next I’ll expand the kinds of notifications that send you an email, but first I want to make it easier for you to specify when you want a notification email, and when you’d rather not. I want to be super respectful of your email!

If you want to keep up-to-date with the latest of everything in Critiki, then look to the Latest Activity page, where you’ll see every new location, picture, comment, article and upcoming visit.

Let me know what you think, and thank you for using Critiki!