The Xbox Insider Team has been excited to watch the growth of the new Subreddit launched earlier this month. Not only has the growth surpassed our initial expectations, but the number of continued comments, upvotes, suggestions, reports, and updates has been incredible. To those of you who have been there and participated: Thank you! If you haven’t seen the new social space, head on over and check it out!

Listening is key to helping Xbox deliver a great experience. It is because of that desire to listen that we knew we wanted a place for Xbox Insiders to record their ideas, suggestions, and requests for features that they want to see tested through the Xbox Insider Program, and we encouraged people to share them with us on the subreddit. With such quick growth, however, a few things became clear to us very early on about how we organize this new space. Soon after launch, we found the sub filled with these feature requests while other readers told us they wanted a faster way to get to the content that they came for, which included more than just ideas and suggestions.

As a team with a culture of listening, we had an interesting challenge. Some Insiders wanted a place to share and be excited about their ideas. Xbox Staff members were reading, commenting, and envisioning how this would work on the platform. Still other Insiders found it difficult to find the news, information, and conversations that mattered to them. How do we balance each of these needs?

Our partners at r/XboxOne gave us a remarkably elegant and simple solution that fits the goals of encouraging ideas and keeping the main page tidy. Feature Friday was born. Feature Friday is a weekly thread, open every day of the week and refreshed on Fridays, that serves as the destination for all of the ideas that Xbox Insiders want to see tested through the Xbox Insider Program. Throughout the three weeks of Feature Friday that we’ve hosted already, we’ve collected over 200 distinct comments from Xbox Insiders and shared the top vote-getters from week to week.

This change in the r/XboxInsiders subreddit becomes especially important as we also change the way we utilize UserVoice for ideas and votes. As you may have already read, we’re taking a much more focused approach to how we collect feedback with UserVoice, in order to give your votes the most impact. On the new Xbox Ideas site, we’re asking you to submit, vote, and help us prioritize what you want to see within specific feature families of things we know we can go work on. Feature Friday becomes a supplement to this, offering a place for you to submit specific suggestions that may not be related to a current Idea Drive campaign. Because we allow and encourage the reposting of suggestions on Feature Friday from week to week, you can carry conversations through a weekly refresh and continue refining concepts.

Xbox Staff are active in both places – checking up on the Idea Drive campaigns that their teams have at xboxideas.uservoice.com and scouring new feature requests and discussions in Feature Friday and the weekly recaps. We’re listening, because it’s key to delivering the experience that you want to have and because it’s a core part of our culture.