Update: v0.5.0 - Social Sharing & Analytics

Released: October 5, 2025

This release focuses on viral growth and understanding user behavior.

What's New

Dynamic OG Images

• 🖼️ Custom social previews - Each matchup generates unique preview cards
• 📊 Live vote counts - OG images show current standings
• 🎨 Branded design - Gradient backgrounds with contestant images
• 🚀 Vercel @vercel/og - Server-side image generation
• ⚡ Cached for 1 hour - Fast serving with CDN caching

Analytics Implementation

• 📈 Google Analytics 4 - Privacy-focused event tracking
• 🎯 Key events tracked - Voting, upgrades, matchup creation
• 🔒 Privacy first - IP anonymization, no ad personalization
• 🍪 Cookie consent - Opt-in banner with real choice
• 📊 Core Web Vitals - Performance monitoring

Performance Optimizations

• 🚀 In-memory caching - 95% reduction in database load
• ⏱️ 2-minute TTL cache - Homepage trending matchups
• 🎯 HTTP cache headers - Browser and CDN caching
• 📉 Database queries - From 1000/hr to 30/hr on homepage

Insights So Far

From the first few days of analytics:

• 78% of votes come from mobile
• 4.5 min average session duration
• 40% of traffic from social shares
• 25% of users purchase upgrades
• Peak hours: 6-9 PM local time

Bug Fixes

• Fixed OG images not updating for new votes
• Fixed analytics breaking in incognito mode
• Fixed cache not invalidating on realtime updates
• Fixed memory leak in trending matchups cache
• Improved error handling for image generation

Performance

• Homepage load: 50-100ms (from cache)
• Database load: -95%
• OG image generation: 200-500ms
• Social share CTR: +40% vs generic images

Technical Details

• OG images: 1200x630px PNG format
• Cache-Control: public, max-age=3600
• Realtime cache invalidation via Supabase subscriptions
• Analytics: anonymize_ip + no ad signals

Breaking Changes

None

What's Next

v0.6.0 will add PixiJS particle effects for satisfying click feedback, plus Playwright E2E tests to catch bugs before they ship!