Ever since dabbl first broadcast on October 1st last year we’ve been looking forward to developing it into an even more exciting station to listen to. dabbl’s output depends on the votes that are cast each hour, so we wanted to introduce features on the website which would reflect this and give a true sense that your input really does matter, so Simon in our Interactive Research & Development team has been working hard on implementing the elements that make up what we’re calling dabbl’s first ‘upgrade’.

One significant change we made was to give each track its own page and short URL, which is much friendlier to use on social networks such as Twitter. The individual song pages themselves feature sparklines that illustrate the popularity of the songs by votes and the frequency of plays the track has had over the last 30 days.

Since community is at dabbl’s core, an important addition we made was to properly integrate Twitter into it. Now dabbl gives you the ability to link your Twitter account and share the songs you’ve voted for with your friends much more easily. We’re hoping this feature will also encourage dabbl’s users to ‘recruit’ others to vote on tracks.

Additionally we’ve plugged Twitter into the ‘Now Playing’ information at the top of each page, so now you can hit the ‘Tweet this’ link under the track and artist name and let your followers know which song you’re currently enjoying listening to on dabbl.

The most common type of feedback we get from dabbl’s listeners is requests for a particular artist or song, which prompted us to make a contact form specifically for this. Now if there’s something you think the station should be playing you can send your suggestions directly to the folks who add tracks to dabbl’s library via the link in the footer.

We’re always thinking of ways to improve dabbl. Soon we’ll be introducing an email notification system which lets voters know that their track is coming up and to keep tuned in.

If you’d like to keep up to date with all the changes and tweaks we’re making, you can follow the dabbl blog which will also update you with the top 20 most voted for songs of the week.

Everyone who has worked on dabbl is very proud of what it has already achieved. Earlier this year it gained a nomination in the ‘Community Engagement’ category at the MediaGuardian Innovation Awards and more recently was nominated under the ‘Technical Innovation of the Year’ in this year’s Arqiva Awards which take place next month, so we’ll all be keeping our fingers crossed for the Arqivas and hoping you will make dabbl’s new features a success.

Emily