We did a lot of looking back this week. For good reason, too: the last two years have been a thrilling roller-coaster ride for Connectify. From our humble beginnings trying to solve a problem for our own team members, onto our early brush with big-time exposure (here’s looking at you, Slashdot!), Connectify has had a rollicking 24-months on the planet. And to be truthful, we couldn’t be happier to see our little project, all grown up!
Looking ahead, we’ve got a lot in-store for Connectify. As always, stay tuned here at the Connectify Blog, and via our Facebook and Twitter pages for announcements on new features, products, added platform support, and everything else Connectify! And for those of you who want that extra-special, behind-the-scenes look at what’s in the pipeline, follow newly-christened twitterer, Connectify CEO, Alex Gizis at @alexgizis. We kinda suspected this, but Alex’s twitter feed is a terrific “follow”… as funny as it is brainy!
Once again, we’d like to thank the Connectify user community for helping us celebrate our 2nd birthday this week. You guys are awesome! If you haven’t already, we wanted to remind you that you’ve got until 8p EST to upgrade to Connectify Pro using our 10% OFF birthday coupon code: HAPPYBDAY.
Birthdays are a hot topic. Some people celebrate theirs like a national holiday, others pretend it simply doesn’t exist. But on every birthday, it’s difficult not to reflect on the past and consider what you’d like to change for the future… while simultaneously enjoying that delicious birthday cake with family and friends.
On our 2nd birthday, we’ve experienced all of the above– including the cake! (See below. YUM) We’ve looked back at our progress and where we’ve come since our first BETA, and we’re looking ahead to make Connectify bigger and better – not just for us, but for all of our users.
Our customers are our future. Without your comments and feedback, we’d be lost. We love connecting with you, and hearing your stories. We do our best to provide the customer support you deserve, because you have given us the customer support we need.
On behalf of the entire team, thank you, for not only being part of our journey, but also part of our celebration.
Since we can’t share our delicious cake with you all across the world, we’re giving away one FREE Connectify Pro license to a lucky Facebook fan! All you have to do is “LIKE” our Facebook page and tell us what you “LIKE” about Connectify!
Don’t forget to visit the Connectify Store before 8PM EST to use your 10% off Connectify Pro Birthday Coupon! COUPON CODE: HAPPYBDAY
With Connectify’s birthday just around the corner, we wanted to take a look back at how far we’ve come since the very first Connectify Beta release in October 2009. So much has happened in such a short period of time, and in all fairness, we wouldn’t be here if it weren’t for you, our growing legion of Connectify users. Some of you may have just discovered Connectify today, while others have been using our software since the early days (ok, “early days” meaning a little shy of two years ago)! Whether you’re downloading Connectify for the first time, or you’re a long-time user checking out our blog for the latest updates, let’s pause for a moment, look back on Connectify’s humble beginnings, and even take a peek at what’s in store for Connectify in the near future.
HUMBLE BEGINNINGS
Let’s start at the very beginning. Once upon a time in 2009, our team was developing wireless hardware technology for the military. On one particular occasion, we found ourselves on an Army base demonstrating that you could drive a full-sized Humvee from miles away using our wireless network. It was a fantastic demonstration, but, behind-the-scenes we spent the day passing USB thumb-drives back-and-forth to transfer files because only one of us had a 3G-card to connect to the Internet. After a hard day’s work, we returned to the hotel to find that they not only wanted to charge each one of us to get on the Wi-Fi, but for each device as well.
After this trip, we briefly decided to carry our own router, but that didn’t last long. None of us wanted to be stuck carrying another brick-like device and power cord, and when we needed to use it, we needed another power outlet. Our frustration with the state of wireless networking finally boiled over. We simply wanted to connect to each other, share Internet connections, and get our devices online, without paying a fortune or carrying more hardware in our already overstuffed computer bags.
Connectify was born in a marathon of late-night software development. Once we had a working beta in-hand, it seemed like everyone around the office was finding a different use for Connectify. We no longer needed our hardware routers on-the-road, and some team members found Connectify useful for extending the range of their home Wi-Fi networks. It soon dawned on us that if we found the software to be a lifeline in so many different situations, then surely the rest of the world would find Connectify to be useful too.
IF A TREE FALLS, AND NOBODY’S THERE TO HEAR IT…
There was no dazzling product reveal at CES, or fanfare at TechCrunch50. Connectify was months away for anything like that. We simply posted an early beta of our software on the Internet in October 2009. The team wondered if anyone would find Connectify, save a few outliers wandering the furthest reaches of the web. But, with doubts only starting to creep into our minds, something astonishing happened: Slashdot.
Not 24 hours after we’d uploaded Connectify Beta 1.0 to our servers, the Slashdot community picked up on it. Slashdot is a messageboard and forum created for, and moderated by geeks. It’s the biggest and most influential site of its kind. And in the tech world, the geeks that read and moderate Slashdot are the early-adopters and trendsetters. It didn’t take long for a post about Connectify to get “modded up” (in Slashdot parlance) to the front page of their site, where millions of the most influential tech nerds and computer geeks would quickly learn about it. We weren’t a hip startup, and of course we didn’t have hot-shot VC funding at that time, so coverage from the tech blogosphere seemed all but out of the question. Still, Slashdot spread word-of-mouth about Connectify in a way that no other site could have. Within a matter of hours, our servers were running at full-tilt as tens of thousands of people started downloading Connectify. Our mouths were agape as many of the very same sites that seemed like a pipe dream just hours before, took notice. Lifehacker, PC World, GigaOM, and many other influential technology blogs wrote complimentary articles about our software, spreading word that much further. It was an amazing moment, to be sure. But, positive reviews and through-the-roof metrics aside, we realized in an instant that people needed software that made these often complex networking tasks simple; they wanted Connectify.
BUILDING STEAM WITH A GRAIN OF SALT
The day we launched Connectify was indeed a turning-point. The feeling of being onto something was palpable, and it rooted itself deep into the company psyche. With downloads for that early, barebones beta growing by the hour, we collectively made the decision to shift the focus of our company. Even in the beginning stages, so many of you reached out to us, each time with new and inventive ways of using our application. We heard from college students who were finally able to get all of their devices online in their dorm rooms. There were the soldiers in Afghanistan who used Connectify in the field, to stay connected with family back home. And, we can’t forget the hundreds of thousands of users who had more pedestrian use-cases, though still just as important to us. Business travelers, coffeehouse owners, homemakers, and people from most any background imaginable, contacted us to tell us how they had come to rely on Connectify.
And of course, we saw a business in Connectify. But, before there could be a business there had to be a feature-rich, error-resistant product with wide adoption. We understood that, and we started slowly. Each iteration of the software was slightly better than the last. We’d make Connectify a bit easier-to-use, or add a nifty new feature. The development team spent hundreds of hours in those early days, poring over user logs to iron out bugs and compatibility issues. Our users became a vocal part of the development process too. Through our social media channels, like Facebook and Twitter, we received feedback, both positive and negative, and watched as a bona fide Connectify community appeared before our eyes.
While the Connectify product evolved through its 2.0 milestones, broad adoption grew in spades. Sometime in the spring of 2010, we remember people having already heard of us when we mentioned who we were. Gratifying as that was, it was simply an anecdote to what was really happening. A lot of people were using Connectify. By September of the same year, we surpassed 1 million downloads. “Not a bad run for ten months,” we thought to ourselves. But what we knew from our constant vigilance with metrics and analytics was that the growth of our user-base was growing exponentially. Low-and-behold, in half the time it took us to pass the 1 million mark, you had helped Connectify reach 2 million downloads.
FUNDING AND THE FUTURE OF CONNECTIFY
Fast-forward to our upcoming birthday on October 29, 2011, and the Connectify software has garnered 4 million+ downloads in a matter of two years, becoming an essential app for people all over the world. But that’s just the tip of the iceberg. Today, with Connectify Pro, users are increasingly taking advantage of new value-added premium features that go beyond Wi-Fi sharing, allowing users to interact and share files with connected computers and devices, and much more. And while our users’ networking needs continue to grow, the Connectify team is hard-at-work developing additional features and new, cutting-edge Connectify applications across an increasing number of computer and mobile operating systems. As reported by TechCrunch, Connectify’s recent round of funding from IN-Q-TEL (an organization that helps fund new technologies for use by the US Intelligence Community), will help us bring the next-generation of secure, easy-to-use networking software to users all over the world. With so much happening here at Connectify, we wanted to take a minute on our birthday, to thank you, our users for using our products and being active members of the Connectify community!
…AND FOR OUR USERS, A VERY SPECIAL 24 HR. ONLY, 10% OFF COUPON FOR CONNECTIFY PRO!
For helping us make Connectify what it is today, we’re offering a 10% OFF coupon for your Connectify Pro purchase! Starting at 8p EST tonight, until 8p tomorrow, you can head to the Connectify Store, and use COUPON CODE: HAPPYBDAY on your Connectify Pro purchase!
We wanted to take a moment during our birthday week to thank the Slashdot community. Slashdot was instrumental in helping us bring Connectify to tens-of-thousands of early-adopters who downloaded the first Connectify Beta, way back in 2009.
While we’re celebrating Connectify’s birthday this entire week, the day we consider our actual “birthday” is October 27th, 2009. Of course, there was a beta floating around the office for a week-or-so before that, but on that one day, Connectify went from being an app that a few of us used on business trips, to a piece of software used by thousands of people around-the-world. A short post on Slashdot was the turning-point for Connectify, and the blogs and sites that quickly picked up on our application from there, helped Connectify grow by leaps-and-bounds in a matter of days.
The original Slashdot post. Clickthrough to enlarge.
Admittedly, we’re all geeks of various stripes here at Connectify. And when our group of software developers and engineers had a working version of Connectify finished, they simply did what came most natural, posting Connectify on Slashdot, the go-to messageboard for the technically-inclined. Thinking back, I’m sure no one had any expectations for this Slashdot post (besides, perhaps enjoying a bit of nerd-cred for the nifty app we’d developed). So, our team was understandably amazed by what happened next.
Connectify website analytics (October 25-November 9, 2009) Clickthrough to enlarge.
The Slashdot community championed Connectify, “modding-up” that little post about our software to the front page of the site, where the early-adopters of the tech community took notice. Sure, we had our share of negative commenters chiming in (welcome to the Internet, folks), but all the chatter only continued to push our servers to full-tilt, while users all over the world downloaded Connectify. We could hardly keep up with the demand. It didn’t take long before major tech blogs like Lifehacker, GigaOM, Engadget, ReadWriteWeb, and PCWorld began posting about Connectify too. With this early support from the Slashdot community, and coverage across these influential tech news outlets, we were able to reach users like you, who have come to rely on Connectify. In fact, since that first Slashdot post on October 27th, 2009, we’ve been building steam steadily. Today, Connectify has over 4 million downloads and counting!
Looking back, there couldn’t have been a better start for Connectify. We’re not the type of team that cares much for being the flavor-of-the-month, and besides, back in 2009, Connectify was the leanest of lean startups, and a “marketing budget” wasn’t even in our vocabulary. Instead, we’re fortunate to have been supported by our own community over at Slashdot, and adoption of Connectify has been growing organically every since.
This week, as we celebrate Connectify’s 2nd birthday, we wanted to give a special shout-out to the Slashdot community! You helped us spread-the-word, and bring Connectify to users all over the world.
Today, we’re giving away a free Connectify Pro v3.1 license to a lucky user who follows us on Twitter and tweets @connectifyme telling us how they first heard about Connectify!
Welcome to our blog! Whether you’re here for the first time, or catching up via your RSS feed, we’re excited to share that this week Connectify is celebrating its 2nd birthday!
Some of you are loyal users from the beginning, many of you downloaded somewhere along the way, and this week we’re all going to celebrate.
Share in the festivities with us through our blog and official social media pages on Facebook and Twitter. It’ll be our way of connecting with you, and thanking you, for downloading our software and spreading the word to family and friends.
Of course, it wouldn’t be a party without a few favors! Leave us a comment and tell us when Connectify worked best for you. The best use-case we read will be awarded a FREE version of Connectify PRO!
We’re looking forward to getting Connectified to you. From the front-lines …
To the “no vacancy” signs…
The entire Connectify Team couldn’t think of anyone else we’d rather celebrate our birthday with than our users.
Follow our blog each day this week for continuing Connectify Birthday coverage!
Tomorrow we’ll be thanking the tech-blog writers who turned our software from computer-geek to tech-chic. We even have a few presents for you to open, too!
I woke up this morning and channeled my inner Luke Skywalker. After defending my precious Blackberry for years and years, I decided to make the switch to the “dark side.” Just put a black cloak over me and call me Darth Vader because…
I got the iPhone 4s.
I finally get to experience a touch screen phone with a brand new iOS5 operating system. I’ll be able to play Words with Friends on the train, instead of waiting to play on my iPod via WiFi. And, most importantly for me, I’ll get to Facetime with my friends and family who live far away.
I’ve heard a lot about the video-chat app, but was surprised to find that I’d only be able to use it over Wi-Fi, and not 3G. I’m sure I’m not the only one. Luckily I’ve always got Connectify running on my laptop, so I’m able to share whatever Internet connection I have, be it Ethernet or 3G/4G mobile broadband, as Wi-Fi with my new iPhone.
With a quick check of “the numbers,” I noticed that I’m far from the only one using Connectify to get my iPhone online. In fact, Apple devices are connected to Connectify Hotspots more than any other brand of device. In the last month alone, Connectify has had over 560,000 unique users connect their Apple products such as iPads, iPods, and of course, iPhones.
If you’re a new iPhone user like me, or a long-time Apple user still unable to Facetime when you want – don’t fret. Until we’re given the ability to Facetime over 3G, Connectify is here to help you to stay-in-touch with the people who matter most.
Connectify v3.1 is officially here! With this latest version of Connectify, we’ve made several improvements that will ensure an increasingly smooth user experience. Connectify Pro v3.1 users will enjoy easy-to-use firewall controls that let you decide which connected computers and devices can access your local area network, and which can access the Internet only. All Connectify 3.1 users will benefit from intelligent software conflict detection, an improved troubleshooter, and other bug-fixes that make this version of Connectify the most error-resistant, and feature-rich to-date.
Easy firewall control for Pro users: Once you start your hotspot, there are two simple checkboxes to control whether you allow the clients Internet Access and whether you allow them Local Access. Local Access controls whether they can connect to each other, and your computer.
Detect Wi-Fi Off: Connectify now detects and warns you if the wireless has been switched off (airplane mode) on your computer.
Input Validation: Connectify now validates your inputs as you type. This really simplifies dealing with confusing fields such as WEP passwords which may only be exactly 5, 10 or 26 characters. If finding a valid password frustrated you, you’re not alone, think you’ll find this release much friendlier.
Conflict Detection, Part 1: It has become clear that most of the “bugs” that users have reported on Connectify 3.0 are actually other badly behaving software interfering with the operation of Connectify. For the two most egregious offenders, SonicWALL VPN and Comodo Firewall, Connectify now refuses to even install while they are on your system.
Conflict Detection, Part 2: When you Submit Error Report, more information about firewalls and antivirus are sent back to Connectify support. We hope that this will allow us to debug other conflicts much faster.
Help Menu: We tried to make the items in the Help menu clearer about what they do. We also put the items from the Help menu right in to Connectify folder on the Start Menu to make them easier to reach should you have an issue.
Improved Troubleshooter: The Troubleshooter has been improved, it no longer tells you about the many things that are working fine, and just focuses on the problems. It also gives better descriptions and links into our online support system.
More Icons: Updated vendor database with more companies and icons for Clients
Improved Installer: Many small improvements to the installer. Should lead to less reboots; also Connectify and the installer refuse to continue if a reboot was required, until such time as you reboot.
Data in ProgramData: The Connectify Service now stores its data and logs in the system’s ProgramData folder (usually c:\ProgramData\Connectify), instead of the folder in Program Files.
The Internet is full of possibilities. Often times, you may even find yourself presented with too many choices, making it hard to decide which product would be the best fit for you.
If you’re looking for a product that can deliver free Internet to your portable devices by turning your computer into a Wi-Fi hotspot, we know Connectify is your best bet.
Yet, we’re also aware that this is a day and age where technology thrives on competition! One of our biggest competitors is the Novatel Wireless MiFi wireless router.
Below is a simple chart, displaying the top 5 key differences between MiFi and Connectify. We’ve always trusted our users to make the right decision, which is why we’re leaving the choice up to you.
With Connectify you can do everything you could do with a MiFi, and much more. You don’t have to worry about battery life or another piece of hardware. There’s no need to pay a monthly fee, and there’s no cap on data or overage rates. We think the choice is pretty clear.
61 Comments to Read 
