We’ve got another announcement to make… one that we think you’ll all be pleased with. For the foreseeable future (somewhere in the neighborhood of 12 months), all new accounts will be FREE OF CHARGE and all accounts of those that helped us beta test are FREE FOR LIFE (ours, not yours). Go ahead, lavish us with your praise.

Currently there’s only one account level: “Gig Band“. With a Gig Band account, you get to work on up to five projects at a time. If you think that’s too few, let us know in the comments, but for now, our plans are to handle it on a case-by-case basis. If you think you deserve (or need) special treatment, drop us a line at contact@fatjam.com and plead your case.

We may be out of Beta, but we’re nowhere near the end of the road and we’ll have lots of exciting news for you over the coming weeks. Stay Tuned (get it, it’s like, a music joke… *sigh*)!

We’ve officially stopped adding features until after the launch, so all the changes over the next couple of weeks will be aimed at tightening up presentation and making things that are already there more obvious. To that end, we’ll be posting a lot of new how-to’s in the Knowledge Base starting later today.

As I eluded to in the last paragraph, we’re launching this mofo. The magic date is October 13th. On that day, we’ll officially open up registration to the whole world. We’ve got some more news about accounts coming tomorrow, but rest assured: all our beta users will be taken extra special care of!

Now’s the perfect time to make your voice heard if you’ve been using the application and think there are rough edges or are just plain unsure about how to do something. Leave us a comment or use any of the methods mentioned in this post to get in touch.

I’d like to take the opportunity to welcome everyone to the beta program and encourage you all to speak your minds whenever you feel the need.  We’ve set up a few ways for you to do just that:

1. Forums: Since community is a big part of this whole enchilada, we have forums to help you all communicate with each other and us in a public space. Incidentally, we’re just fleshing this out and if you’d like to see more top level categories, please leave a comment below or post in our suggestions forum with the name and description for your proposal.
2. Bug Reports: If you see anything that’s just completely cooky or plainly broken, drop by our bug tracker and let us know, please.
3. Personal Touch: if you have a support or general question or issue that’s best resolved by personally relating it, just fire off an email to either support@fatjam.com or contact@fatjam.com as is appropriate.

Our own Stephen Caudill was interviewed by our own Travis Vocino on The Apple Blog. How incestuous our industry is, huh?

At any rate, it’s a great interview if I do say so myself. And, more importantly, it’s an excellent window into the hardware currently employed at FatJam which makes everything work all awesome-like. Some people might be surprised to realize just how deep the Mac dependence runs.

With more and more web applications being built by Mac-addicted developers, I thought I’d have a chat with Stephen Caudill over at FatJam. Stephen not only codes his creations on Apple hardware but also relies on it to serve up the applications to the public.

Head over to The Apple Blog and read the article.

This sense of self-promotion should be considered when you think about how to advertise your userbase.  They’re out there posting, chatting and contributing to your network.  Reward them!

For example, when I’m posting photos on Flickr, I get just a slight jump of excitement in knowing for the split second my face might appear in the “Recent Photos from Everyone” area of the homepage that I might make a new friend.

Furthermore, if I’m an artist that really takes my photography seriously (which, unfortunately I’m not — hooray iPhone pics), the ability to actually market my work on the network is definitely a major plus.  It’s really what separates putting your photography work on Flickr vs. just your own site.  On your own site you’re essentially living in a vacuum where every view is a result of an action you made on another site.

The best part is, you’re rewarding your users for doing what you want them to do: use your site to solve their problems — something that, presumably, they’re doing anyway.

Over at BlogCatalog, almost every element of the site lets you know who has been there recently.  Not only does this give you a real sense of community in an otherwise lonely internet, it also provides many opportunities for discovering new people to further interact with.

In BlogCatalog’s case, this means potential views to the user’s blog.  Generally that’s why they’re using the site to begin with.

For FatJam, we joyfully list some of our most active users on the footer of every inner-page.  The middle area of the site is reserved for content which pertains to that specific user, while the footer gives the users a glimpse or snapshot into what the overall network at FatJam is up to.

They may explore some new artists they hadn’t seen before, remember to check up someone they liked before, or simply take note that their recent jam is being advertised to all of their colleagues.  Without these elements, it’s sometimes easy to feel like you’re working in a void even though you may be sharing a server with 50,000 other users.  That’s just not cool.

Make your users feel loved and give them some free play in exchange for being an active, contributing member of your hipster internet society.