We released our new Chrome Shopping Extension a couple of days ago.

It makes it quick and easy to add new things to your Helishopter Profile when browsing stores, just click on the Helishopter Icon and “Add new+” when on the product page.

Get it now at the Chrome Web Store

We silently launched our public beta a couple of weeks ago when, we activated the accounts of the people on our waiting list. The feedback from our beta user have been overwhelmingly positive and we are now very happy that we are starting to see some organic growth already!

Since our initial public beta release we have introduced some new features and improvements for you to check out:

Bookmarklet
You can now use our handy bookmarklet to quickly add things to your Helishopter profile when browsing stores. Go to helishopter.com/goodies and add it to your browser right away.

Add custom image when posting
If we fail to identify the correct image for you when posting, you can now specify the URL of the image you want to use.

Suggest to friend
You can now send a suggestion to a friend when posting or reposting. You can choose to send to an e-mail address or to one of your Helishopter or Facebook friends.

Speed
In some browsers helishopter was very slow. This has improved significantly since our initial release and it is now a lot faster but it will still improve a lot within the next few months.

Mobile site
The first limited version of a mobile site is now ready. You can now browse all profiles easily from any mobile browser. Great when you receive an e-mail notification on your iPhone.

Support/Feedback community
Several of our users requested a way to get in touch with us to give feedback besides e-mailing us. To address that wish we have integrated with getsatisfaction.com and added their support widget. Now if there is anything you want to ask us or suggest you can just click on the “Feedback” tab on the right side of the page.

Helishopter loves you
Finally, we know that Helishopter is nothing without it’s users and all your feedback is incredible valuable too us. Please keep giving us suggestions on how we can improve!

The private beta of Helishopter is progressing nicely and we are proud to announce that the public beta of Helishopter will begin in October.

Are you ready?
If you want to prepare for the launch you can prepare by starting to build you following right now. Just create your account at http://helishopter.com and then send the link to your profile to your friends and fans. Everyone that signs up using your profile page will instantly be a follower of yours.

This is the first post to our new blog with an update to tell you that the Helishopter private beta is progressing nicely and that we are working hard to launch our public beta in October.

Till then, we think you deserve to get some background info to the Helishopter story, our story.

Where it all began

The idea
It started off in a very different direction where we talked about consumer insight websites and the fact that they are focused on product reviews rather than the person giving the actual review. Who cares what I think about a camera if I know zip nada about photography? Who cares what I think of a computer if the only thing I care about is design? So, the initial idea was to build a consumer insight website built around people rather than products. But we scrapped it. Not that the idea was bad but we scrapped it.

Then one of our founders flew to Prague for a long weekend of mind exercise and came back with what was the start of Helishopter. He said:

Reviews and opinions are important, but secondary. Helishopter is about showing who you are by sharing the things you love. There are lots of sites where people collect things, but I would never use any one of them. Lets build something we would actually use ourselves.

From that point on much have happened. The idea has evolved and the functionality has been set. The idea is not revolutionary nor unique, but the execution is. Often we ask ourselves, why has this not been done before.

The name
Helishopter. Silly, sticky… you name it. We like it. At our first brainstorming meeting, where we had no intention of deciding on a name, but we could not help but to play with different words and the name Helishopter came up, one of many. We laughed at the name but for some reason we started using it to refer to the project. And it stuck. So we said – let’s keep it. Helishopter it is.

The people
Although we would like to say that we are thirty people sitting in the SF bay area with Sequoia backing us, that is far from the truth. We are four individuals from Sweden.

• The Entrepreneur – first company at age of 16, now 29. Ups and downs, now more excited than ever. Works full time at major fashion house to finance his life.
• The Business Man – telecom and finance. Full of ideas and inspiration. Loves to be part of a start up process, from idea to execution.
• The Designer – long time friend of the entrepreneur and the one adding flair to the project. When not at Helishopter, free lance photographer.
• The Code Monkey – the only paid FTE. Brilliant coder, often referred to as the neurologist by the business man. All in all – it’s a small team but with many vital components. Execution, skill, feeling, network…

We believe that we are on to something special. Again, something very simple and something thats pretty much already out there, but in a new exciting package designed to help us share the things we love.

We hope to see you on Helishopter soon.