At the end of last year we launched Ping.it in closed beta. Since then, we had some great press and thousands of sign-ups from testers across the world. Based on your feedback, we worked hard to make Ping.it the best platform for content discovery.

So, what’s the news? Well, today we’re ready to open Ping.it in public beta, but what we really want to tell you about is one feature that we think is a game changer.

We’ve experimented a lot up to this point; at each stage building a little more of the feature we’re about to showcase today. We now think we’ve created something genuinely useful that can help content discovery in the social world.

The new feature is called “Probes”. These are small apps which go out and retrieve information from across the Web on behalf of the user. They can be created, edited, shared and subscribed to – all by Ping.it users.

For the first time, you’ll be able to personalize content subscriptions to suit your unique interests, rather than being limited to simple RSS feeds as most readers are.

Say you wish to receive updates on “YouTube Videos on Reddit with more than 1 million views”, for example. You can easily create a Probe that uses the APIs of both YouTube and Reddit to draw the information directly to your feed, which can then be shared across the Ping.it platform. It’s a whole new world of content discovery.

What really makes this feature stand out is that in contrast to the passive methods of typical ‘single-feed subscriptions’, our users are able to decide what they deem interesting or useful to “probe” for, and that’s what they’ll see. You – our users – decide, not us.

We’ve pivoted a few times since we started (twists and turns that are inevitable in the path of a startup) but now there is a recognized need for a truly social reader: free from clunk, confusion and irrelevant content. Ping.it has been in the game long before the announced retirement of Google Reader, but now that has happened, our path is clearer than ever before.

Try out the Probes and let us know what you think – we’d love your thoughts, comments and criticisms. You can get in touch via team@ping.it and keep up-to-date by following us on Facebook, Twitter and the blog.

We have created Ping.it Groups to let Ping.it users create their own social clusters. Each group can have any number of members and can be one of the 3 types:

Contact Group: This is only a group of your own contacts allowing you to ping many people at the same time without them knowing about each other. Instead of adding your contacts one by one you can send to all at the same time.

Private Group: If you want a group of people to communicate privately with each other this is the group you should create. No outside users will see pings to this group.

Public Group: If you want others in the community to join your group then a public group is what you need. When you ping something to this group it will be accessible on “Public groups” under the “Explore” section on home for all users.

Creating a group:

From the Ping.it popup:

1. Open the popup either from the bookmarklet when visiting a page or pasting the link on Ping.it/home.
2. There is a link just below the recipient’s box named “Create group”. Click on it to get the “Create group” popup.
3. In the popup you can fill out name, description and choose the type of a group.
4. In the same popup at the bottom you can easily add existing contacts to the group.
5. If you want to add new contacts to the group click on the small “Add contacts” link.
6. When you’re done, click “Create” at top right.

From the “Groups” tab on your Profile page:

1. Click “Profile” on top right and then the “Groups” tab on the left side.
2. Click “Create group” on top to the right of your name.
3. Follow points 3 to 6 from the description above.

Editing a group:

From the Ping.it popup:

1. Open the popup either from the bookmarklet when visiting a page or pasting the link on Ping.it/home.
2. Start writing the name of your group in the recipient’s box (where it says ‘Start typing to add recipients’). Select the group in the search results either by clicking on it or using up and down arrows and hitting ‘Enter’ on your keyboard.
3. When you see the group in the recipient’s box, you can simply click on the name to open the edit box. See points 3 to 6 in “Creating a group” on how to edit data.

From the “Groups” tab on your Profile page:

1. Click “Profile” on top right and then the “Groups” tab on the left side.
2. Find your group in the list and click “Edit”.
3. See points 3 to 6 in “Creating a group” on how to edit data.

Sending to a group

From the Ping.it popup:

1. Open the popup either from the bookmarklet when visiting a page or pasting the link on Ping.it/home.
2. Start writing the name of your group in the recipient’s box (where it says ‘Start typing to add recipients’). Select the group in the search results either by clicking on it or using up and down arrows and hitting ‘Enter’ on your keyboard.
3. Click “Ping it” and it is sent to the group.

From the “Groups” tab on your profile page:

1. Click on “Profile” on top right and then the “Groups” tab on the left side.
2. Find your group in the list and click “Edit”.
3. Paste the link you want to ping to this group in “URL to ping” text field.
4. Change subject and message as you like and “ping it”.

More important info

• Pinging to multiple groups does not send multiple pings to members of more than one of the groups. They’ll only receive one ping in their inbox.
• As a sender be relevant. Ping only what is expected to be pinged to the group based on its name and description.
• Spamming is absolutely not allowed so only add your own contacts into your group when you know it is something they would like to receive.

Today, on 12 December 2012, Ping.it is officialy going into a public beta, opening our gates to press and media outlets. To mark this important moment, we have prepared a new launch video – we hope you will enjoy it:

Ping.it Quick Tour

What does the media launch mean for you? Most importantly, there should be many new users coming to Ping.it over the next few days, so we encourage you to head to Ping.it and meet them. Also, all invitations are now sent instantly, so if some of your friends were waiting to join Ping.it, now is the time! They just have to use the “Request Invite” button on our homepage, and they will receive an activation link straight away!

And here are some other things that you might check out in the meantime.

Our tongue-in-cheek flowchart on how to share things, and not make people hate you: http://ping.it/sharingflow

A great infographic that presents a world of content sharing today: http://ping.it/infographic

Our media launch press release with some fine details, if you’re interested in this sort of things: https://ping.it/press

Have fun and see you on Ping.it!