Thank you for being so patient as we rebuilt Recon from the ground up.
We know that the transition to the new Recon resulted in the loss or temporary removal of several features that many of you relied on. Since the switchover, we’ve been listening carefully to your feedback and looking at how these features were used in the old Recon.
In some cases, we made the decision to retire features because we believed there was a better way to solve the underlying problem, or they were little-used, or not available on all platforms. In other cases, we deferred features to prioritise the stability and core functionality of the new platform.
We also recognise that, in some cases, we got the balance wrong. This page explains what happened to these features, what we’ve learned from your feedback and what we’re doing about them.
Location Tree
In the old Recon, you chose your location from a fixed location tree. This tree was structured by large geographic regions and countries, with some countries further broken down into regions and, in some cases, cities.
This tree posed a few challenges:
- Only a handful of countries were broken down into regions or cities. If you lived in a country that wasn’t broken down further, such as South Africa, it was very difficult to find people who were in Cape Town versus people in Johannesburg.
- The location visible on your profile was tied to this tree, which in some cases meant it gave a very broad indication of where you were.
- The tree was static and didn’t change as our member base changed.
- If you wanted to add a travel plan, you had to select a location at the very end of a branch of the tree, which limited how useful the feature could be.
For the new Recon, we wanted to move away from selecting a location from a fixed tree and instead use latitude and longitude coordinates. These can either be provided by your device’s location services, with your permission, or you can select a location manually from a map.
We still believe this was the right direction for the new Recon. It gives us much more flexibility in how we represent location and, ultimately, how you can discover profiles.
Where we got it wrong was underestimating how important the flexibility of the old system was to our members.
We’ve received a lot of feedback since launch from members who want to find and connect with people regardless of where they are, whether that means browsing an entire country, a particular region, or even looking beyond their immediate geographic area.
We’ve heard that feedback clearly, and we’re actively working on ways to restore more flexible profile discovery within the new Recon. We don’t have a fixed date for this yet, but this is an area we are actively working on.
Travel plans
Travel Plans were intrinsically linked to the location tree above. When we decided to remove the location tree, we also looked at how people were using Travel Plans.
We were surprised to find that fewer than 3% of our members used the feature regularly. Given that we had already decided to replace the location tree, Travel Plans seemed like a reasonable candidate to defer. Not having to migrate this functionality to the new Recon would also reduce the complexity and time involved in the switchover.
What we underestimated was the value that Travel Plans brought to those members who used them, as well as the value they provided to other members who benefited from knowing when someone was visiting their area.
In other words, usage alone didn’t tell the whole story.
We had always intended to revisit Travel Plans in the new Recon and bring them back in some form. The feedback we’ve received has reinforced that decision.
Where we are now: We still intend to bring Travel Plans back to the new Recon. We’ll use what we’ve learned from how members used the old feature and feedback from you to determine how it should work in the new platform.
News & Events on Web
We’re calling this section of the platform The Scene.
We made the decision to switch over before this feature had been completed for the web platform. We expected that it would follow the switchover relatively soon afterwards.
Once the new system went live, however, we encountered a higher-than-anticipated number of complex technical issues. Some of these were edge cases that we simply hadn’t encountered during our pilot testing.
We made the decision to prioritise resolving these issues and making the new Recon stable rather than introducing another major feature while we were still dealing with problems elsewhere. We believe that was the right decision at the time.
Where we are now: Work on The Scene is well underway and it will be coming to the web platform shortly. It may already be available by the time you read this.
Online Presence
We understand that knowing whether someone is online is an important part of a platform like Recon.
We deliberately deferred this feature because we wanted to rethink how it worked rather than simply carry the old system across to the new Recon.
In the old version of Recon, the definition of "online" had some quirks. You were considered to be online if you had used the website within the previous 20 minutes, or if you had used the app within the previous 24 hours.
We didn’t feel that logic made sense to carry over to the new Recon, particularly as we wanted the experience to be consistent across web and app.
Where we are now: We have plans to bring online presence back to Recon, with a new approach that will work consistently across the web and app experience.
Advanced Search & Keyword Search
Advanced Search was another feature that we considered a candidate for deferring until after the switchover. It was only available on the web platform and was restricted to Premium members.
There is a lot of crossover between Advanced Search and the filtering functionality available in the new Recon. The biggest gap is the ability to search for profiles using keywords.
Rather than simply recreating Advanced Search exactly as it worked before, we want to bring together the different ways of discovering profiles in the new Recon.
Where we are now: We intend to provide the useful functionality that Advanced Search offered through a combination of keyword search, filters and more flexible profile discovery. This functionality will be available across both the web and app.
Safe Sex Information
We didn’t feel that the existing Safe Sex field on Recon was fit for purpose any more.
The information it allowed members to provide was quite limited, and we didn’t feel that simply carrying the existing field across to the new Recon would provide enough useful information.
Rather than migrate a feature that we felt needed improvement, we decided to defer it and look at how we could make it more useful.
Where we are now: We intend to reimagine the Safe Sex information available on profiles and bring it back to the new Recon in a more useful form.
Managing Photo Albums
We know that many of our members care deeply about being able to curate their photos into albums.
We migrated existing photo albums from the old Recon, and split the functionality into essential core features, and the nice-to-haves, which were deferred, like the ability to manage those existing albums or create new ones.
Where we are now: We recently released the ability to manage photo albums on iOS. We’ve also started work on bringing this functionality to the web, and we’ll make it available as soon as we can.
What happens next?
We know that bringing back individual features is only part of the picture. The feedback we’ve received since the switchover has also helped us understand more clearly how you use Recon and what matters most when you’re trying to discover and connect with other members.
We won’t be able to address everything at once, and we don’t want to give you artificial dates that may change as priorities develop. Instead, we want to be transparent about the direction we’re taking and, wherever possible, show you the progress we’re making.
We’ve heard your feedback. We know there are things the old Recon did better, and we’re committed to addressing those gaps while continuing to build on the foundations of the new platform.
Thank you for continuing to give us your feedback, and for your patience while we work through the remaining gaps in the new Recon.