Introducing Followers: Your Favourite Car Personalities, YouTubers And Friends On Car Throttle

When we launched our user content platform back in March of this year - a platform which allows CTzens to create content and have it featured on the homepage - we were blown away by how much you enjoyed the experience. Our internal analytics showed a huge uptake in the new tools; from tens of posts per day from our in-house editorial team, to thousands of posts uploaded at all hours of the day – ranging from amazing Garage cars and hilarious ‘made-for-CT’ videos and memes, to hard-hitting community stories.

But in order to become the best community for car enthusiasts, we knew we had to keep improving the experience. One of the most requested features this year (other than the launch of iOS and Android mobile apps, more on that below) was the ability for CTzens to start following other users. While communities are a great way of finding posts specific to your interests, it’s clear we want to stay up-to-date with our car-loving friends, famous YouTubers, personalities and publishers who are using the platform on a daily basis.

So today, we’re proud to announce the launch of followers.

The first change we made was to redesign the profile page. Original profiles made ‘score’ one of the most prominent parts of the design. Don’t worry, score still remains and you can continue to build this by posting content that gets upvotes. But we have now reworked the page to include following and follower metrics, which you can now show off as you watch your numbers climb. We’ve also made it even easier for you to browse your posts and Garage cars.

On top of this, we’ve made significant changes to the feed. Not only will you see the hottest posts within communities you follow, but you’ll also see posts from users you follow. Your ‘Latest’ feeds will be made up of communities and users you follow and we hope that you’ll start to use these tabs a lot more to see exactly what’s going on in the automotive world at any moment.

In the feed you’ll be able to see users you follow thanks to the handy green icon next to their names. Hovering over these usernames (on desktop only) will reveal the tooltip you’ve come to love, but tooltips now have a ‘Follow’ button to make it extra easy for you to keep building your list of favourite creators.

Finally, we’ve added ‘Suggested Followers’ into the feed to encourage you to check out other cool partners who are posting content we think you shouldn’t miss. Right now, you’ll see esteemed publishers like Speedhunters and EVO Magazine, and YouTubers like Shmee150 and EngineeringExplained, as well as our own in-house staff.

We also wanted to make our mission clearer and more concise for new Car Throttle users. That’s why we created a brand new onboarding experience, designed to educate and encourage lurkers to get involved in the discussion.

What do we hope to achieve?

By encouraging users to follow each other, we hope that CTzens will start to build closer connections with those who share that similar petrolhead passion, and by building a following yourself, you’ll want to keep your followers up-to-date with those Sunday morning drives, late-night garage modifications or even a piece of car news you think they haven’t seen yet.

Where’s my app?!

Don’t worry, we haven’t forgotten. Since our new Android developer joined us in September, we’ve been making solid progress on the app, and we’re also starting work on the iOS app this month having found ourselves an awesome developer (to be announced soon)! Whilst we can’t give you an ETA on app launch, we can say that we’re still working as hard as ever to give you the mobile experience you deserve.

Any questions?

I always like to take this time to get your feedback, as without this vibrant community, we wouldn’t be where we are today as a business. Do you have any questions? What are the next features you’d like to see? Fire away…