The Leafly Blog

It’s been a while since anything has been posted here, we’ve neglected the blog but definitely not the site.  I always get questioned on the street with “What has Leafly been up to?”.  Outlined below is what we have kept ourselves busy with for the last month or two.

New dispensary menus

For a long time we have been unhappy with the lack of functionality included in our dispensary menu pages.  They looked OK and served their simple purpose but perhaps a little boring.  We are never satisfied simply matching “the other guys”, time to reach higher.  The last two weeks have been spent redesigning menus from the ground up to make them more useful for everybody.

• Search:  Type in the box to find items on the menu quickly.
• Sort: Sort menu items by donation amount, rating, or popularity on Leafly.
• Filters!: The most powerful feature on Leafly is the ability to find the perfect strain.  We’ve brought this awesomeness into the menus.
• Photos: Now dispensaries can upload photos of their flowers, edibles, concentrates, etc.
• Strain Details: Read all about strains without leaving the page.

“Safe for work” mode

Leafly has always been a safe site to browse while at work, at home with the kids, or at church.  With photos becoming more prominent on the dispensary menu pages we felt it was time to protect our visitors a little more.  By default images now are hidden until you opt-in to see them.  You only have to do it once and can switch back at any time.

Look for the link in the footer of every page to toggle pics on and off.

Specials

Dispensaries can now post coupons and specials for you to use.  Watch for offers from your favorite nearby collectives on their page, lots of great deals flowing through.

Android

We’ve been promising for a while and finally got our Android app launched!  Check it out today in the Android Market.

iPhone Update

A small update has been uploaded and pending review with Apple. Added specials, speed enhancements, and other minor fixes.  Look for it in the coming days.

Next?

Tons of new features will be coming down the line over the next few weeks and months.  We will be improving the existing Leafly experience as well as adding new and useful features.  Subscribe to the blog, we promise to update more frequently.

Posted: Friday, February 10, 2012

Yes! You’ve read the headline correctly. After much waiting and requesting we have finally implemented user photos so you can see the strains people are rating. 

For a long time, one of the most frequently requested features for Leafly has been the availability of strain photos.  Now users can upload pictures at the time of a review or come back later to upload.  Show us your meds, and don’t be afraid to get creative.

To start browsing images look for the new camera icon on the top right of a strain page that looks like:  

So start taking those photos and uploading right away.

Posted: Wednesday, June 29, 2011

Well, it’s hard to believe but Leafly has just celebrated its first birthday. What started so small a year ago has grown into something that we couldn’t be more proud of. Since the site has launched we’ve create a community of thousands of registered users writing thousands of cannabis strain reviews and that number is growing faster than ever. 

A lot has happened since that first launch day. We’ve created some great new features within the site including a comprehensive dispensary finder, a faster strain explorer, an achievement system, lab testing data integration and so much more. Within the mobile space we’ve launched an iPad app for budtenders and our iOS app (currently running at a 4 star rating!) so our users can take those thousands of strains with them wherever they go. All of this is just the beginning too.

There are lots more to come as well. We really have an exciting roadmap lined up to make Leafly the absolute premier destination for cannabis information. Just a few things you can look forward to throughout the next year of Leafly:

• Redesigned pages to make the user experience better than ever
• Strain photos. You’ve been asking and we’ve been listening. 
• iOS App 2.0 with complete account, ability to rate strains, share images and receive notifications
• Mobile app for Android devices
• Better community controls and an improved reputation system
• And a lot more that we don’t want to give away just yet (trust us, it’ll be good)

All of this wouldn’t be possible without the amazing support of our users. It’s because of you that Leafly has done so well and has become such an integral resource to medical marijuana patients throughout the world. We are so happy for your support and can’t thank you enough. Here’s to another year of Leafly!

Posted: Tuesday, June 14, 2011

Some great news coming out of the House of Representatives this week for the medical cannabis industry and its patients as three new bills were introduced to Congress today by a coalition of Democrats and Republicans. One bill designed for patients will protect people acting in accordance with state cannabis laws from being prosecuted by the federal government. The other two bills support dispensaries and collectives, with one that will help ease the tax burden on many dispensaries enabling them to claim business expenses as tax deductions as well as one that pushes to prevent banks from discriminating against dispensaries.

For patients, the ‘States’ Medical Marijuana Patient Protection Act’ authored by Congressman Barney Frank (D-MA) aims to provide immunity from federal prosecution for individuals and entities acting within accordance of state laws regarding medical cannabis usage. In addition it will initiate the process of rescheduling marijuana under the Controlled Substances Act moving it out of Schedule I and II, an effort with roots tracing back to the early 1970s. The bill is co-sponsored by Congressmen Jared Polis (D-CO), Congressman Pete Stark (D-CA) and Congressman Dana Rohrbacher (R-CA).

For dispensaries and collectives the ‘Small Business Tax Equity Act’ authored by Stark allows medical marijuana dispensaries to claim federal tax deductions in the same ways other businesses are legally entitled to, putting a stop to the IRS audits that have been happening recently. The third bill introduced is the ‘Small Business Banking Improvement Act of 2011’ sponsored by Polis, Stark and Rep. Ron Paul (R-TX) and will provide medical marijuana dispensaries full access to banking services through amendments to the Bank Secrecy Act. 

All of this is great news for the industry as a whole as real legislation is finally moving forward at the federal level. Be sure to reach out to your representatives to show your support, and for those that may need a refresher, here’s how the three new bills will become laws.

Be sure to follow us on Twitter and visit us at Leafly.com.

Posted: Wednesday, May 25, 2011

One of the top requested features on our customer feedback forum has been to display pictures on our strain pages.  Today we launched the first step in reaching that goal.  Now registered users can upload their own photos after writing a strain review.  These uploads will go through an approval process and show up on the site shortly after.  With this, we hope to build a large collection of imagery and begin associating the photos back to individual dispensaries so you can have a good idea of medicine quality before making the trip.

Visit any journal page to get started.

http://www.leafly.com/me/journal

Posted: Wednesday, May 4, 2011

Many of you may have noticed we’ve pushed our first app update for Leafly on iOS devices. It’s a pretty minor update, but we think we’ve made some big improvements and have cleaned up some issues found with the initial launch.

Strains Nearby

Probably the most significant change is the inclusion of filtering to show only those strains available nearby. Similar to the filters now available on the Leafly website, within the app you can now limit the results to just what’s available in your area — a super helpful feature when you are out and about using the mobile app.

Misc. Bug Fixes

We’ve cleaned up the dispensary pages now so each tab within should now load nicely with no more of those strange blank pages showing up. Also, we’ve worked on stability for those iPhone 3G devices and have tested with OS 4.0 without crashing, so if you are still having issues please let us know.

Coming Soon

We’re working on adding your accounts to the app so you can login, rate and review and keep favorites. Stay tuned and be sure to keep the feedback coming so we can help make your Leafly even better.

… and remember, if you are enjoying the app be sure to leave a rating within the AppStore so we can help get the word out!

Posted: Thursday, March 24, 2011

We’ve added a new feature to our strain explorer that lets you filter based on geographic area.  Now you can drill down to the effects you want and only see strains that you can find nearby.  Try some anti-anxiety meds near San Francisco, or maybe you want to giggle in Denver.  Reducing clutter and making it easier to find the strains you want is our sole purpose in life.

Posted: Wednesday, March 16, 2011

I’m sure if you spend any sort of time on the internet you have heard a story or two of frustrations and disappointments around Apple’s iPhone app review process. Today, exactly 1 month after submitting our app, we joined the ranks of the rejects.

After all that waiting, Apple had a problem with the content.  ”But wait”, I can hear you all screaming at your monitors, “there are plenty of other cannabis-related apps already!”  I know, I know.  We had those same thoughts, between fits of rage, after having waited for so long only to be so let down.  Once composure was regained, we took a deeper look at what the actual issue was.

You see, we fancy ourselves as a site to get legitimate information about a legitimate medicine.  Overall we have been successful but there has always been one piece of data that didn’t quite gel with the rest; activities.  We have known it was borderline sketchy but didn’t address it until we got this kick in the pants from Apple.  No other pharmacological resource would show you what kind of activities you could be doing with various prescription drugs.  Adderall: great for studying!  Nyquil: it’s fun at parties! 

This afternoon, we harnessed that rage and funneled it into some key changes on the site, geared to better representing our beloved herb.  The strain activities data has been dropped and replaced by a section where users can tag negative effects for each strain.  This has been a requested feature from users and took us all of about an hour to implement, a testament to the awesomeness of our dev team.  The debut effects are: anxiety, headaches, dry eyes, dry mouth, paranoia, and dizziness.  It may take some time for these to get seeded across all strains (pun intended) but eventually it will prove to be another piece of useful information.

We’ve revised the app to reflect these changes and resubmitted, keep your fingers crossed for a quick review.  Remember, when life gives you lemons, you make lemon kush!

If you would like to see something added, as always, feel free to visit our feedback forum.

Posted: Wednesday, February 23, 2011

Never in a million years did I think Leafly would get as big as it has when we earnestly laid down our first lines of code.  This morning we passed a big milestone in our quest to be the biggest and best strain review site in all the land.  4,200 reviews submitted by people like you for their most favorite, and not so favorite strains.  I took this opportunity to comb through the data and create some incredibly advanced infographics.

First up, top 42 most reviewed strains:

Blue Dream & Sour D are favorites by a pretty big margin.  Not much surprise, both are readily available in California dispensaries.

Next, highest rated:

Master Kush gets the honor of being the highest rated strain in our database right now.  I should note that I only took strains that have at least 10 distinct reviewers so as to weed out any of the smaller varieties.

Finally, average rating by category:

Here we can see that on average, indicas are given a higher rating than the others.  Really the margins are so small I wouldn’t say there is any clear leader at this level.  This mostly confirms my suspicion that people love all kinds of weed :).

Posted: Sunday, February 20, 2011

Today while browsing Hacker News I came across an incredible jquery plugin called isotope.  After viewing some demos it became immediately apparent that this would be a great fit for our strain explorer.  When this page was originally built I took some shortcuts to get it done quicker and it worked OK most of the time.  As the list of strains grew from 50 at launch to over 350, the number of user complaints grew as well.  We had always planned to revamp it at some point and isotope seemed custom-made for us and a bargain at only $37!

I set aside a couple hours and rewrote all of the javascript on the page.  It still chugs a bit in IE but there are no more script timeout messages.  This was a first pass to get it in, optimizations will continue.

Posted: Tuesday, February 8, 2011