Edit posts & comments on mobile, share events publicly, video settings, and 10+ improvements
2024 is off to a flying start here at Circle!
In our year-end recap video, I talked about our commitment to make Circle undeniable for our creators and brands. We have an incredibly exciting product roadmap this year to bring us ever closer to that goal — I can’t wait for you to see what’s in store over the coming months.
In January, we’re releasing the long-awaited ability to edit posts and comments on our mobile apps, share your events publicly, video settings, paid trials, and 10+ other improvements.
Dive into the details below 👇
Edit posts and comments on mobile apps
You and your members will soon be able to edit posts & comments with our iOS, Android, and Circle Plus mobile apps.
Gradual rollout to all communities begins today, and will be completed by Feb 16.
This is such an obvious feature, you might be wondering what took us so long.
Well… here’s a peak behind the curtain for those of you curious:
It turns out there isn’t a single community or social networking app in the world which supports as many in-inline block types as Circle in a single post (images, videos, polls, PDFs, voice notes, file attachments, and over 700+ embed providers).
Can you think of a single one? We couldn’t!
It also turns out there’s a really good reason for this: it’s an immense technical challenge to offer native mobile editing with seamless performance when you support that many blocks in a single post.
We’ve had support for text blocks from day one, and we didn’t want to deprecate any of them to offer mobile editing. So to make this possible, our teams had to re-build the editor for the ground up. The new editor had to be mobile compatible, heavily optimized for performance, and support every current block type.
And we’ve finally done it! I’m proud of our teams for settling for no less just because it hadn’t been done before.
Learn more about our mobile apps →
⭐ TIP: Over 50% of Circle members enjoy the convenience of using the platform on their mobile device. If you haven’t already, you can ask your members to download the Circle app on iOS or Android by linking tocircle.so/mobile.
To make this a breeze, consider sending them a direct message by creating a bulk action workflow.Learn more about workflows
Share events publicly
You can now generate a publicly visible shareable link to any event, including those in private communities or spaces!
To share your event publicly, click on Share on the top right corner of the event details page and toggle on Share to web. Now, copy this unique URL and share it with logged out visitors if you’d like over emails, social media posts, etc.
Visitors will see a simplified event page with all of the information, and will be invited to sign up or sign in to your community before they can RSVP.
If you run a private community, remember to customize the Custom member sign up link in Settings → General to point to your own custom sign up URL.
Learn more about event spaces →
New video settings: Custom thumbnails, make downloadable, saved progress
We’re providing admins with even more customization and controls for their video content. When you hover over a natively uploaded video to Circle in a post or a lesson, you will now see two new options will appear in the top right hand corner of the video:
- Custom thumbnail: You can now upload a perfect, eye-catching thumbnail for your videos. Learn more here.
- Make video downloadable: When toggled on, members can download your video to access at their convenience. Learn more here.
To enhance the experience of watching videos, we’ve added video progress tracking. Now when a member chooses to revisit an unfinished video at a later date, they’ll be able to resume watching from where they paused it previously. Progress is saved locally in their browser.
Paid trials
You can now offer paid trials by charging an upfront payment before a trial period starts on your paywall subscriptions.
To set this up, navigate to your community’s main dropdown menu and click Paywalls. Select the paywall you’d like to edit or create a new paywall (you’ll need to complete the Details tab before moving onto pricing).
On the Pricing tab, you can set your trial period and then click Add price. Choose Subscription as your Payment type, enter in your pricing amounts and toggle on Upfront payment.
After you set the price for your upfront payment, toggle on Required before trial to charge that amount at checkout.
Learn more about paid trials →
Enforce email verification for new signups
To help prevent spammers from joining your public community, we’ve added a setting to Enforce email verification for new signups in Settings → General. If enabled, new accounts will need to verify their email via an OTP (one-time passcode) before completing the sign up process.
This setting is available to public communities with SSO (Single Sign-On) disabled, and will enabled for new communities by default. Existing communities will need to turn this on manually.
Manually attribute sales to an affiliate
We’ve added the ability for admins to manually attribute paywall transactions to an affiliate.
To manually attribute a sale to an affiliate, navigate to your community’s main dropdown menu and select Paywalls. On the Subscriptions tab, find the sale you’d like to change the attribution for and click on the ellipsis menu.
By selecting Attribute sale to affiliate, you’ll be able to enter in the affiliate you’d like to compensate for this sale.
Learn how to manually attribute sales →
Other updates
INR, PLN, and AED currency support for paywalls: We’ve added support for INR (Indian Rupees), PLN (Polish złoty), and AED (United Arab Emirates Dirham) currencies to paywalls.
Limit RSVPs: When creating or editing an event, you can now limit the number of attendees by toggling on Limit RSVPs and setting a maximum limit on the Advanced settings tab. Learn more here.
Improved API responses for profile field updates for Zapier and Webhooks: Custom profile field values are now available directly in the API responses for member CRUD actions, making it easier to access field information right away instead of performing separate lookups.
We’ve also introduced profile field key and profile field value attributes for the Profile field updated webhook event on workflows. This will provide users more information on profile field values and removes the need to use workarounds to fetch corresponding data.
iOS improvements
We also shipped a few improvements to Circle’s iOS app:
- Editing posts & comments (available by Feb 16)
- Ability to create and edit image posts
- Improved posts and comments date formatting
- Ability to view full video transcripts
- Support for event RSVP limits
- Improvements to chat composer and error messages
- Trigger vibrations (haptics) for certain actions
- Performance, reliability, and UI/UX improvements
Android improvements
Plus, here are some improvements on Circle’s Android and Circle Plus branded apps:
- Editing posts & comments (available by Feb 16)
- Improved post creation experience
- Support for reordering images on image posts
- Added size limit for file uploads to improve load speeds
- Increase deep-link support
- Performance, reliability, and UI/UX improvements
Dive into our latest features and updates at the next Product with Pedro!
Join Circle’s Pedro Hernandes as he unpacks the latest features and improvements to the Circle platform. During the session, he’ll walk you through:
- This month’s top features
- Where to access them and how to set them up in your community
- Use case examples to better serve your needs
You’ll also have the time to ask questions and get answers live!
So if you’re having a hard time keeping up with what’s new, why not join us and get the details firsthand?