March 12, 2011

More About The Social Networking Site

I am happy to report that the site is still up and active and we are recruiting new members.  Thank you.  Check out my blog here if you would please.

I am happy to report that work on the site in my last blog in ongoing and some areas are much more intuitive or I should say easier to find your way around. Some files were unfortunately lost in the process, but if people don't realize this, then they would be wise to accept it and realize that information can be accidentally lost in a beta version.

I may be hasty in writing this, but if something changes, so be it. I want to say a few things about the orange column on the right side of the page – the orange vertical tool bar. This is an interesting column as it starts with a search box at the top and as of now there is not much to search for, but may be just what you need six months or longer as more and more people join and more information is put up on the sight.

The next item down the column is for connecting to Twitter. Since I have a twitter account, but don't use it, I checked the no button. This closed the area, but tells you to click in the twitter icon if you wish to change. The very small Twitter icon does appear after you move away from the page you are on (I was on the home page) and I would think it would be the same for answering yes, but I am not sure. I did click on the icon and it asked me to log into Twitter. And that same log in page it does have a warning for you to read. The icon did disappear altogether after I rejected logging into Twitter, and it did reappear later as I experimented with other buttons.

The next item is your photo and a place for help and logout. I know that some do not use a photo which may be okay, but I would encourage you to use one or a symbol that is unique to you. I could put a picture of a toy semi-truck since I retired out of the transportation field, but since I use a photo on my blogs , I prefer my photo.

Next down the column is the Manage Account rectangle with when clicked on has the following: change profile photo, edit profile, edit location, edit account and finally edit privacy and settings. Each takes you to that section in your profile. This is followed by the Invite Contacts. Here you can do several things to invite your email contacts to join you on this site. I may explore this more later and invite a few more people as I have been emailing individually some of my contacts.

Then we come to Your Status. Basically this is a short (suggested three words) statement for anything you wish to state. It accepted my six words “I'm not ready for daylight savings”. Look around at the different members and see what they are saying. Next is the important items, Messages, Requests, and Notifications.

Messages are private messages (PM's) that you receive from other members. These are just that – private so keep them that way. If someone insults you and uses this for advertising, I suggest that you let the owner David Wolf or one of the moderators know immediately and let them handle the matter.

The requests are just that, a friend request that you may accept or deny. Notifications are notices you will receive from others that they will issue as bulletins to their friends to invite them to join a group, or take part in an event or possibly enter a chat room at a certain time.

Then there is a section with icons for adding Video, Photo, Music, Event, Groups, Blog, Bulletin, or Files. The last two were not what I expected and when I clicked on them I was given an answer. Bulletins are notifications you send. Files are public files you put in the library to store or use later.

Next is a list of who is online. It does not seem to be auto-updating and the number in the tab on the lower bar directly under it will seldom agree in number with the list of people on line. Then there is a View All which should (I thought) make the two areas agree, but even that seldom does.

The orange toolbar is one of the more creative parts of this sight. I had not explored it until recently and while I had looked at it before, I have not clicked on many of the buttons and investigated what was happening under the hood. Now that I have, some of it is not the most intuitive, but once you actually click on them, you will know what the icon or button is for and its purpose.

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