It’s been awhile since I’ve updated the blog, so it might be hard to believe that a lot of work has gone into Quizlet since the last post. We’ve made the Quizlet search engine a ton better, we’ve added some exciting new technology that does voice recognition (more on that later), and made a lot of performance enhancements to keep the site running as growth increases.

Now, as we head into summer (and the accompanying dive in traffic as people get of school), we have the opportunity to experiment with lots of cool new features. We’re building a lot of cool tools set to be done before the summer is up — one of which we’re ready to announce today:

The Quizlet API is now available! For those who don’t know, API stands for Application Programming Interface. The Quizlet API is a tool that lets programmers develop tools that work with Quizlet’s massive content library (we now have about 30 million flashcards on our site!) This will let people build cool things like cell phone applications and screensavers that use Quizlet data. Developers have been asking for this for years, so it’s great that it’s finally available.

The Quizlet API is free to use and only requires you to be a registered Quizlet user (which you can also get for free). This is our first release so you may not be able to do everything you want just yet, but you should find that it’s surprisingly powerful. If you have suggestions for stuff we should add or bugs you find, please post a comment in the blog.

Are you a developer? Get started here.

Hey! We have lots of improvements to announce today! In random order:

We’ve started a donations page to let Quizlet users who appreciate our free service to donate towards future improvements to Quizlet. If you find Quizlet useful, please consider donating $10 or more. Donating will also remove all advertising from your account for 1 year. You also get this cool button on your user page:

Improvements to Space Race:

• Words move a little bit slower
• The game now ends when you run out of lives instead of when you miss two words in a row.
• The last answer before the game ends is now displayed.

Your Facebook friends list is now refreshed at regular intervals.

Users who are 13 but were born in the first few months of 1996 were allowed to sign up but not use the site. This is fixed, and we apologize for this annoying problem.

The accents bar now remembers when you turn it off on the Make Flashcards page.

Applications to groups now send group administrators the message the user included in their application.

We’ve updated our Terms of Service to clarify what is and is not acceptable content on Quizlet. We strongly recommend all Quizlet users take a look at this document.

We’re improving our Frequency Asked Questions section and opening the FAQs up to user suggestions, so that users can now add their own information to an FAQ.

We have a lot of projects we’re making progress on. Here are some of the things we’re focusing on:

• The Quizlet iPhone app is making slow and steady progress. It will work offline, and sync with your Quizlet account to download all of your sets. It’s going to be worth the wait.
• Improvements to speed and usefulness of the Search/Content Finding functionality on the site.
• Continuing to improve the Facebook environment on Quizlet, and making it easier to invite and find your friends on Quizlet.
• A top-secret project in collaboration with MIT. You’ll hear more in the next month.

And of course, we’re always working on keeping the site speedy and reliable as Quizlet grows. I almost forgot to mention that there are now more than 400,000 registered Quizlet users, who create more than 100,000 flashcards every day. That’s a lot of studying!

And don’t forget to follow us on twitter!

Do these things sound good? Your donation will make them happen faster!

Last thing: We’re looking for a summer intern to work on these projects in San Francisco. More information is coming soon. Interested? Email jobs@domainisobvious.com

Today we’re launching Facebook on Quizlet. This feature lets you use your Facebook account instead of a Quizlet account to log in to Quizlet. This removes the need to create a Quizlet account with a password and email address and birth day–you just use your Facebook!

If you already have a Quizlet account, you can use both. If you do authorize Facebook with an existing Quizlet account, Facebook features on the site will only show when you are also logged into Facebook (there will be helpful prompts that show you how to do this).

In addition to logging in with Facebook, you can do some special Facebook things within the site:

When you post a new set (that’s not private), you have the option to post a link to it on your Facebook page, so that your friends on Facebook can see what you’re studying:

You can also see your currently online Facebook friends that are also studying on Quizlet. The My Groups page becomes My Friends and you’ll see something like this:

If you’ve added Facebook to your Quizlet account and want to remove it, you can do that in your preferences page (link at the top-right corner).

This is just the first start on the Facebook project — giving you the basic features developers Facebook gives you to integrate websites. As we hear suggestions and explore the platform more, we’ll add things that make this integration even more useful.

So, what do you guys think? Let us know

P.S. I also slowed down Space Race a little and made some bug fixes. Post a comment if you see something amiss. Thanks!

Hey all–

We’ve made a ton of progress so far on our big January push. We’re finishing up the last touches on Facebook Connect, the iPhone app is coming along well, and one of our super secret projects is on track to make a big splash.

In order to communicate quickly, I’ve decided to get a Quizlet twitter account. Is Quizlet down? Having issues? There’s a good chance you’ll find some quick info on Twitter. I’ve been skeptical of Twitter for awhile, but with all the chatter about it these days (see this awesome super bowl visualization, I figured I’d give it a try.

That’s all for now, just wanted to keep everyone in the loop. Expect some big things in the next couple weeks

Hey all- I just recorded a quick video that I’d like you watch:

We care very much about the Quizlet community, and want to make sure it can grow in the most constructive and safest way possible. I want to assure you we are working on a number of very cool things that I’m excited about showing you in the coming weeks. I have the next 3 weeks of January scheduled completely to work on Quizlet stuff–If everything works out, we’re going to be collaborating on some cutting-edge technology being developed at MIT that certainly hasn’t been seen on any of the other flashcard sites

We look forward to hearing what you have to say.

Yesterday we finished a long-needed upgrade of our Quizlet servers. If you’ve ever been studying on Thursday night, you might know that Quizlet slows down when there are a lot of people studying for their Friday exams. We’ve upgraded from having 2 servers to 3, and all of them are better-tuned and have better hardware specs. It doesn’t sound that exciting, but let me tell you I’ve been wanting to do this for a long time, and you should experience a much-needed upgrade in the general swiftness of the site.

I haven’t updated in awhile, but I have been working on Quizlet quite a bit. You might have noticed the new home page for logged-out users, the new subjects pages, and a few features pages. There are a bunch of new features I’m working on, some involving some interesting math, so I can’t wait to put them up when they’re ready.

Last time I posted, I was about to leave for MIT. I’m here now! Cambridge, MA is a great place to be. I’m absolutely loving this place–the people, the excitement for learning, the quirkiness, the sheer genius of the people walking around. I get to paint and do whatever I want to my room (including my door). It’s all awesome. Photos are in order, eh?

The other day we had a fire in our kitchen (not our fault! broken oven!) and since we have a webcam in our kitchen, we could watch the firefighters putting it out from outside in the rain (everyone had to evacuate the building).

(Photo by Mario Bollini)

At the beginning of the year, the people in my dorm built a 109-foot wooden rollercoaster in the courtyard. It was excellent.

Last weekend we took a bus to an apple orchard and had tons of fun picking apples and buying apple cider and taking fun pictures.

One other note: The iPhone project has been put on hold temporarily, but I think it’ll be starting up again in the next couple weeks. A lot of you have been talking about it, so we’re really excited to get more work done on it.