Young Writers Society

A lot of this has been soft-announced in other threads, but some changes have been made. Also, it seems better to group these new updates together in one thread since they're all related. If you have any bug reports, please use the Report A Bug Thread.


What is the Young Writers Social Network?

The Young Writers Society now has a real social network built into the site. It's a very simple one, but a social network nonetheless. It's a blend of Facebook and Twitter, so if you're familiar with both, you'll understand YWS' social network. Here's how it works:



The social network has three core areas: the profile, the feed, and notifications. Lets discuss each in turn!

The Profile



The profile has six main sections. The first section is the sidebar on the left, which displays basic info about that user as well as who they are following and who is following them.

The other five sections are: Wall, Info, Portfolio, Lit Comments, and Gifts. The Wall is essentially a guestbook where other users can leave you messages. You can also leave a status message on your profile by posting in your guestbook. Other than that, I think the remaining sections are self-explanatory.

Comments


This shows a status message I made. To make your own status message, just post a message on your wall. Some key stuff:

• The date line is a link. This is called a permalink, and provides a link to that comment. This way, you can either bookmark it or share it.
• When you click 'Reply', you aren't taken to a new page. Instead, all replies are handled in-line, meaning the page never refreshes.
• Liking is the same as on Facebook. If anyone has liked a comment, you can click on where it says "X Like(s)" to see who they are.
• You can remove any comment from your wall. When you remove something, a blue box pops up just to confirm it.
• By default, only two replies are shown. If there are more, you can click where it says "View All X Replies". As with everything else, this is handled in-line, meaning the page does not refresh.
• Bbcode is allowed in messages.

The Feed

The Feed is the core of the social network. On YWS, we don't have a friends system per se. Instead, we have a followers and following system like Twitter. When you follow someone, their status messages, blog entries, likes, and new literary works will automatically start showing up in you Feed.



The above image is a screenshot from my feed. It shows a status message from Demeter, and a few replies to it. As with comments on the Wall, I can click on "View All 6 Replies" to see all the replies. Clicking "2 Likes" will tell me who liked it. Clicking "Reply" will pop up a little textbox, and I can enter a reply in-line just like with comments on the Wall. The date line is also a permalink to that comment in case I want to bookmark it or link to it.

Below Demeter's status message is a series of updates from some of the people I'm following.


Notifications

If the Feed is the core of the social network, then Notifications are the core of YWS. This is where you get notified about any activity pertaining to you, such as when someone reviews your work, replies to your blog, posts on your wall, etc. Here's what can show up in your Notifications area:

• Comments to my literary works (lists by username)
• Replies to topics I started (just counts the replies because otherwise it'd get very long)
• New comments on my wall
• Replies to a comment I made on my wall or someone else's wall
• Replies following a reply I made to someone else's comment
• New replies to a blog entry I made
• Replies following a reply I made to someone else's blog entry
• New comments on a Novel, Anthology, or News Story
• New posts to a storybook I'm participating in
• New requests for reviews if I have a review thread in the Will Review for Food forum
• Likes to my topics and literary works
• New followers

That's quite a bit, so it takes the Notifications area a little bit to load. All notifications are listed in chronological order with the newest up top.

Additionally, notifications are based on the time of your last visit. If your last visit was more than a week ago, then only notifications from the past week are shown. This is to prevent it from being huge! And because it's based on the time of last visit, notifications do not disappear once you've checked them.


Wrap Up
So what's the point of all this? My hope is that the new social network will increase user engagement on YWS. Translated, that means I hope people spend more time here. My thinking is that the longer amount of time people spend on YWS, the more likely it is that they'll review something.

Plus, I'm hoping the new social network will help YWS retain old members. We're actually doing a better job of this than I thought, but there's still ample room for improvement. Add to that, the new social network can keep YWS feeling small even as the site grows. We could have 1,000,000 users (we won't) and you could still easily chat with the same 20 people.

Nate, just wanted to remind you that you are number one for all of the hard work you've put into this Social Network. I haven't been on facebook in days now because I'm too busy playing around with all of YWS's new toys.

Without you, where would YWS be?

Wonderful! On the notifications page, would it be possible to show when the last post was and who it was by, so that it's easier to see whether or not we've read it? It's just that for some threads, I get email notifications as well, so when it says "5 new posts in the Moderators forum", I'm not sure if I've seen them all or not. What do you think?