We are experiencing serious database issues (i.e. we can't access it -- see, told you it was serious). That is making the site unavailable. It is also affecting anyone with a badge as those are failing to load as well.

We are working with our provider to get everything back up and running. Sorry for the inconvenience.

[UPDATE: 8:25am -- Site is back up. Sorry about the hassle.]

Part of the big June release is a new UI. I started working on the new design this week and started committing it to HTML and CSS last night.



View a larger screenshot here.

So far, I really like where it is headed and thought I would share it to get feedback. So what do you think?

Last week, Paul Greenberg did a review of several digital lifestyle aggregators including Profilactic. Unfortunately, Paul found a bug and had a really bad experience with the site.

We fixed the bug and followed up with Paul and he was kind enough to give us another shot. So far, he likes what he sees and suggests people "add Profilactic to your 'must look at' list of social aggregators." We agree with him 100%. Read the full review here.

BTW, because we are shameless self-promoters, we have submitted Paul's re-review to digg. Feel free to digg it.

Yesterday, we got featured in a Mashable article (for the second time) about Web 2.0 spelling. Of course, it is always nice to be mentioned; however, it is really nice to be mentioned with established sites like Flickr, digg and reddit.

Later in the day, the article got picked up on digg and has received around 1,100 diggs so far.

As a result of both of these mentions, we've seen a nice spike in traffic and a ton of new Profilactic registrations.

Last night, we deployed a fix for the stability issues we were having. May has been a big traffic month for us, so we had to tweak a few things here and there to keep the site up and running smoothly.

If anyone is still having problems adding or removing sites from their mashup, please let us know.

Just wanted to let everyone know that we are aware of the stability issues we've been having over the past week or so. BTW, I am referring to site stability, not any personal and/or emotional problems we may be having here at the Profilactic lair (although I could tell you some stories).

As I mentioned last week, we have a seen an upturn in traffic this month. We are working on making the site more stable. We appreciate everyone's patience.

Tom pointed out some interesting stuff in our logs this morning. Traffic in May is off to a great start. Our daily traffic is up 400% over April and we've already done more pages in the first 10 days on May than we did in the entire month of April.

TechCrunch featured research from the Pew Internet & American Life Project that looked at the digital divide in America. According to the data, at least 15% of Americans should be using Profilactic.com.

Well, the data doesn't mention us directly, but it does show that 8% of Americans are "omnivores" who use lots of "information gadgets and services" and 7% of Americans are "connectors" who are frequently online to "connect to people and manage digital content."

So, using that ironclad logic, *and* given that the US population sits at around 301,786,381, about 45.2 million people in the US should be using Profilactic.

Right now, though, we're about 45.1 million or so shy of that goal (depending on how you round the numbers). But don't despair. That's where you come in. If you're using Profilactic and you like it, then feel free to tell all of your "omnivore" and "connector" friends to give us a try. We'd appreciate it.

Having looked at Profilactic every day for the past 6 months or so, I realized that some of our UI choices were not so great, especially the size of some of our fonts.

I'll be tweaking things over the weekend to make the site *slightly* less obnoxious (sorry, the orange is staying). I've already added some tabs to the sig area and tightened up the "Where to find me online" list.

Just got an e-mail from Harrison over at the-website-formerly-known-as-Spokeo. He says that Spokeo, who some people considered a competitor of Profilactic, has changed its focus from a digital lifestyle aggregator to a community news site. They've also changed their name from Spokeo to HypeIt.

Hmm. That is a curious change of direction. Sure, the DLA space has gotten crowded lately; however, it is nowhere near as crowded as the community news space. And to make matters worse, in that space, there is a clear leader (Digg) who is miles ahead of everyone else.

The DLA space, on the other hand, is still sorting itself out. And although I didn't find Spokeo's product compelling, I think they had a better chance battling it out with a bunch of upstarts than taking on well-established sites like Digg, Slashdot, Reddit, Netscape, Newsvine, etc.