Today, we are proud to announce that we are opening Redux up to the public. We’ve been excited by the fantastic growth and reactions from the community we’ve been seeing, and decided it’s time to open the doors!

As we launch, we decided to step back and lay out what we want to build with our community. Below is an “Entertainment Manifesto” of our core beliefs, and we look forward to engaging with our community on this manifesto, and together, continuing to achieve these principles in the coming years.

1. Entertainment is moving online
More and more people are turning to the Internet for entertainment. Full-length legal episodes of TVshows are online, as well as millions of independent video producers. Even when Americans are watching TV, they’re surfing the web at the same time. A recent study confirmed that over 57% of TV viewers with Internet access used both TV & the Internet at the same time at least once a month. This opens up huge opportunities in the online media world for innovation and improvement in how people can find, consume, and interact with that media. At Redux, our goal is to “friend-source” the online entertainment process and give people an easy and engaging way to find the best media and links on the web, recommended by their friends and people who share their interests.

2. Cable has a few hundred videos playing at one time. The Internet has millions.
Cable Internet makes a few hundred channels available to you. On the Internet, there are millions of videos that exist. Over 20 hours of video is uploaded to YouTube every minute. We can’t simply channel surf anymore to discover content anymore — we would spend more time browsing for content than watching it. We need to watch the 1 hour of content we love, not the 1,200 hours of uninteresting crap. With Redux.com, we are helping sift through the boring and only deliver the good stuff.

3. We use Friend-Sourcing in real life – why not online?
Friends are far better at knowing what we’d like to watch than any program or television exec. When I know what I’m looking for, search is great (eg. If I want to watch a hockey game, I can go to any number of sites and find it streaming online). But when I don’t know what I’m looking for (eg. I just want to watch hockey, but don’t have a game in mind), it’s much better to hear from friends and people that share my interest. A cable programmer 300 miles away doesn’t know your interests nearly as well as your friends. That’s why we’ve friend-sourced your entertainment on Redux. We want to put your friends and people that share you interest in control of your TV.

4. Entertainment is meant to be socialized
Content is made to be talked about. Watching a man dance around the world is fun, but it’s equally fun to talk about it around the watercooler. Perhaps someone saw another similar video, or someone shared that same experience. A few years ago when we could only watch TV, we had to talk about it in other places — over the watercooler, or perhaps in a forum. But now, socialization of content can happen at the same time as content is being watched. With Redux, you can comment, give props, or even create a media-based conversation where a friend shares a link and you share a video in response, which your friend can then play right in that conversation.

5. Online Entertainment is being consumed differently than it is on TV
The majority of American households use their TV at least once a month, and for many households, the TV is almost always on. But most Americans don’t watch TV when they’re away from home or at work. A growing number of online visitors, however, are starting to “snack” on video entertainment while at work. Maybe they’re taking a lunch or coffee break, or perhaps they’re sneaking in a short entertainment snack while they’re catching up on a few emails. Unlike a TV episodes, which takes at least 30 minutes to watch(with commercials), short form content can be consumed in a couple minutes, and is perfectly suited for online users taking short breaks. No long are we waiting until we get home to watch video — we’re watching in short spurts throughout the day. Of course, the average Redux viewer spends more than an hour tuned into our service, so maybe we’re reducing productivity well beyond our expectations.

6. Online Entertainment will start appearing on TVs
Though many online visitors are consuming online entertainment at work on the go, a growing number of households are connecting their computer or internet-enabled set-top boxes to their TV. As many as 10M American households have connected their computer to their TV at one point. And unlike when we’re at work, when we’re watching entertainment on the living room TV, we’re not looking to just snack. We need to be able to sit back in the arm chair, and passively watching entertainment as we relax from a hard day, or work on something in the background. On your TV set, it’s impossible to sift through all of the content online to find one 10 second video you’ll enjoy, but if you tune into your friend-sourced Redux TV mode, you’re set to just sit back and watch as nature intended.

At Redux our vision is that when we turn on our desktop computer, mobile phone, or TV entertainment is delivered to us through the recommendations of friends and people that share our interest.

Our launch is an important step in our journey to achieve that vision, and we look forward to working with our community to get there. Thank you for all of your support you have already given to help us create and enjoy the great product we see today.

Redux is now giving more credit where it’s due. Now, the “item view” page for every share you make on Redux has a whole new smattering of other goodies you’ve shared. The result is that each time someone passes on one of your shares to Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, or a friend via email, a floodgate into your twisted personality is opened that may leave the recipient helplessly entertained for hours.

A personalized smattering

The point is not just to offer up more entertainment, but also to show that behind the entertainment lies a trail of personalized content selections that only Redux has. While we ain’t so bad judged on entertainment alone, our real power lies with the people and their personality. This personality is represented in the tens of thousands of users and the hundreds of thousands of things they’re sharing, saying, and propping. Now, it’s easier to discover those personalities and get helplessly entertained yourself.

No, no, don’t worry…we weren’t bought out by everyone’s favorite international media conglomerate. Rather, we’ve taken your advice to clean up the Channels page straight to the site, and just in time for the weekend. What was once an endless Babylonian list of quasi-sorted options is now a nicely organized grouping of channels we know you’ll like, channels we know others like, and channels that are coming up.

Our Channels are clearer so your decisiveness doesn't have to be

This is just the first of many steps in organizing the vast supply of content our community gives us every day, so expect lots more to come. Even better, tell us what you’d else you’d like to see. We’re always happy to oblige.

Team Redux

Unbelievably, the feature that we’re most proud of and invested in is the one that has yet to get a proper blog shot-out. And that feature would be you, the proud Redux community.

Without our faithful troupe of entertainment fanatics (and the feedback they bestow), there wouldn’t be any Redux at all, much less a good one. You guys have pushed Redux so far it’s almost embarrassing to look at where we started, before you came along. Months of collaboration later, you guided us to where we are today, and have rewarded us with well over half-a-million shares.

So, this post is for you.

The proud Redux community.

See the full size image here: (warning, its a freaking huuuge file).

No matter what hour of the night/morning it is here at the office, we can always count on you guys to keep us entertained, sane, and motivated to code even harder.

Thanks.

Team Redux

When it comes to getting a point across, sometimes hyperlinks speak louder than words. For moments just like these, we’ve just launched a new feature for your expressive pleasure: Content Replies.

Play in line without having to jump to a new browser.

From now until forever, all picture and video links you share as comments get the Redux-style treatment of preview thumbnails, and play in line without having to jump to a new browser. Some epic threads have already developed, and we’re excited to see what else you guys come up with. After all, if a picture is worth 1,000 words, just imagine what a 5 minute video of a Manbat is worth.

Team Redux

Bloggers are some vocal people, so it only makes sense that our Blogger friends were quite vocal in demanding a real time Redux widget. We happily conceded and made one that does just what you’d expect it to: keep your blog readers instantaneously updated with all of your hot’n’stream-y Redux gallivanting.

If you’re a blogkeep looking to add a splash of real-time entertainment to your site, we’ve got your kit and assembly instructions right here. As usual, we’re listening to everyone’s feedback and making improvements on the daily, and we want to hear what you think. Being bloggers and all, I doubt we’ll have to ask twice.

Team Redux

The holidays came early for us this last week. Mashable, Lifehacker, ReadWriteWeb, and NewTeeVee all had some very nice things to say about us, specifically about our progress with the Facebook and Twitter importing feature. It’s always nice when people appreciate what you’re doing, and it’s even better when those people have thousands of people listening to their appreciation. As a result, we’ve welcomed more users into our community than ever before, some of whom immediately made it into our Recommended class of power users. The result is the best group of entertainment fanatics yet.

The press showing some love!

Thanks to Christina Warren, Kevin Purdy, Dana Oshiro, and Chris Albrecht for the journalistic love, and a huge welcoming hug to all of our new fans. Your boredom always has a home here.

Team Redux

When we created Redux, we always had the idea that Redux would be one-stop-shopping for online addictive entertainment. We’re already well on our way there thanks to our incredible community sharing great stuff, building cool channels, and propping/commenting like crazy.

Problem is, our friends who aren’t yet on Redux are sharing new, great stuff all the time through Facebook and Twitter…in a very very boring way. You know the drill on Twitter:

Single Twitter Post - boring

Exciting, right? And Facebook is no better…

Single Facebook post - boring too

Who wants to dig through all the status updates and bit.ly links to get to the good stuff?

Well, Redux has solved the problem. By enabling Twitter and Facebook importing (LINK), we’re bringing all of your online lives together, weeding out the boring, and giving you only the best entertainment recommended by your friends.

Bring all of your online lives together

Now you can sit back and watch as your combined Twitter, Facebook, and Redux streams reduce your productivity to near zero. What else is there to say except – you’re welcome

Each week, we meet and discuss every single suggestion you send our way, and figure out a way to put it to work. As of the last week, a few of those suggestions have become features.

For those time you just have to send an off-the-record comment, you can now use send a message directly to another Reduxee from their profile, or from the “inbox” tab at the top of the page. They’ll instantly receive the message to their email, as well as an alert to check their inbox next time they sign in.

Send a message directly to another Reduxee from their profile

Also, we’ve officially launched Atom/RSS feeds for every Network, Profile, and Channel, so you can now stay current on all Redux happenings even when you’re away from the site. Just click the icon at the bottom of the page you want to receive, and your favorite RSS reader takes it from there.

Stay current on all Redux happenings with RSS!

If only our species’ evolution had been assisted the same zealous feedback we’ve been enjoying from you guys, we’d all have wings and lasers by now. Stay tuned as we drop more features in the near future, and keep the great feedback coming.

Team Redux

With attention spans being an invaluable luxury these days, we’ve been thinking about how to give you more entertainment, more quickly, in less space. We also want to keep it true to our social nature, and equally fun to use. Not unlike the first scene of Explorers, we collectively had a vision of what this would look like and sketched it down before it was a distant memory. We then gave it to our resident artist, and he made this:

Redux on the Grid

We’re currently building a prototype, and those curious to hop in and tell us how she rides should drop an email for a pre-released alpha. At-a-glance feedback of the design is welcome too, polite or otherwise (it is teh internets after all…LoloL).

Cheers,
Team Redux