GirlsAskGuys Blog

We have been quite busy recently, cooking up some new features that will certainly increase the interaction among members. These features are;

• Live Chat,
• Live Activity Feed,
• Becoming Friends and Followers of Site members,
• User Wall Posts,
• And last but not least updates to the User Profile and My Account sections.

Live Chat was something that we’ve always thought of having at GirlsAskGuys and a partnership with Meebo has made that a reality. Members can now talk to other members in the Chat Room either in a group setting, or individually. As a suggestion for discussion, there will be a topic of the day but the chat room users will certainly drive the main discussion points during the time when they use the chat room. Only Site members are allowed to use the Chat Room to have a better control over spamming or other potent activities. In the near future we will also implement separate Chat Rooms and Instant Messaging capabilities, where you can send instant messages to your Friends on the site.

Live Activity Feed is a new feature that is built on an existing feature. Site users used to be able to see what other members were up to by browsing their profiles and see their recent questions, answers, stories along with other details. Now instead of having to go thru each and every member’s profile to see their recent activities, we have decided to list all members’ recent activities in one spot. We have done so to drive more responses to questions, answer or stories and to increase interaction among our members. Members used to be able to Note their favorite users to their Notebooks and though the system hasn’t notified any of their activities to anyone, users could easily click on their user names from their Notebooks and could see what their faves were up to. With the Live Activity Feed, members now will be able to see either everyone’s or those they are following or they are friends with so they can respond to the new questions sooner, and can comment on the articles faster.

So I mentioned that the Live Activity Feed is built on and existing feature “Notebook”, where members might already have noted other members. These users are now those that you are following. And those members are being followed by you. In other words, you are those users’ fans. And if you are uneasy about someone following your activities, you can block them in your Friends section. Now keep in mind two things if you decide to do this. Someone can still follow your activities such as your questions, answers and stories from your individual profile page even when you block them from following you thru the Live Feed. Furthermore, those members who you block will not be able to respond to any of your entries such as answering your question, commenting on your answer or your story, or sending you a message. So I would use the block feature with caution.

Another new feature is the “Wall Post”. This used to be the “Shout Out” for those who remember, but it was somewhat tucked away and didn’t get much recognition from our members, so we thought giving it a more prominent term and bringing a bit more visibility to it. What it does is simple; if you’d like to thank someone and acknowledge their gift in advice-giving, or give someone props for everyone else to see, you can do it with a Wall Post on that member’s profile page.

And to accommodate all these new features, we had to make some changes to the User Profile and My Account pages. These are pretty simple changes and the use of these should be quite intuitive. But if you happen to have any questions, or trouble in finding something, make sure to refer to our help pages or send us an email.

Onur
homer