New Template Added

We've released new features at a furious pace over the last few weeks and I've neglected the blog. But I had to take a moment to post about our new template type. In addition to the traditional "popup" style friend referral window (our default), we now support a modal dialog using some AJAX magic and the wonderful jQuery library.

For a live demonstration, just click our "Send to a Friend" button on the Refer-My-Friend homepage. It's simple to change your own referral links to use the new Web 2.0 AJAX goodness. After logging in, just edit your Site and choose the "AJAX Template" instead of the default. Then update your pages using the new templates' instructions. Be sure to let us know what you think!

Announcing Refer-My-Friend - First Post

A few weeks ago, after reading an excellent post on the often under-appreciated power of friend referral services, I decided to update the hopelessly outdated script I was using to drive my "Tell a friend" popup on a heavily trafficked domain. Like many a webmaster before me, I was using a freebie script that I had pulled down many ages ago which I'd modified over time to account for the occasional exploit or SPAM attack.
While my DIY script had more-or-less served its purpose, the aforementioned article hilighted the many shortcomings of my approach. For starters, I was leaving a valuable source of traffic intelligence on the table by not applying some shrewd analytics to the referrals my script was generating. Also, like many old-school "Email a Link/Page" popups, my script did not account for any of the modern email authentication measures that have been deployed by major providers over the last few years.
An exhaustive search identified a few hosted referral services, but none provided the modern features and services I sought. Having identified an itch, I tossed the problem to my team at Tempest Strings and we began work on a cure. Flash forward three weeks, and we are proud to announce the beta release of an easy-to-use hosted referral system for viral marketers.
We're calling it a "beta release" because we still have a good number of performance and look & feel todo items left on our list, but we're already using it to provide referral services for several production sites. We welcome any and all feedback, so please let us know what you think and what else you'd like to see here.