Young Writers Society

Firstly, my apologies to Evi for not going with Caligrafeed. Unfortunately, the name was too long! It didn't fit right in the header of the profiles.


Okay, so what is this all about? Many moons ago, I began talking about incorporating a newsfeed into the site; just something that'd make it easier for you to keep in touch with the friends you make on YWS. The idea was to take the guestbook, dramatically expand it, and then add little updates about what those you are following are doing around the site.

And now... it's completely done. The newsfeed ended up morphing into three new/updated sections of the site: the Feed, the new Profiles, and Notifications. I've already talked about the last two before, and I just finished the Feed tonight.

The Feed, accessible via your profile (there's also a link to it at the very top), compiles three elements together:
- Status messages
- New literary works
- New blog entries

So not only can you know a lot more easily now when your favorite YWS author adds a new literary work, but you can even transform your profile into a discussion forum. You can share links, writing tips, and ideas with all the people who are following you since you'll be showing up in their feed. It's like a weird semblance of Facebook and Twitter.

In any case, I'm looking forward to what the community ends up doing with these new updates. You have the tools now to transform YWS into something really special.

I really like these new additions! They are so cool. Now I don't have to beg people to PM me with the next chapters of their stories! I can just look at my super cool Feed. Thanks Nate.

I LOVE the FEED.

FEED our minds. XD

I love the new changes, Nate!

Now it is even more Facebook-y which is really awesome!

I am FED.

Firstly, my apologies to Evi for not going with Caligrafeed

Haha, I understand. The FEED is pretty awesome too! All these new additions are very exciting. Thanks Nate!

*squee*

This is so cool.

I was pleasantly surprised with the feed. *thumbs up.*

Wooow. This is better than Facebook. I mean, it's brilliant!

uhhhm... What if I broke the feed? More specifically, your (Nate's) status update broke the feed.

The attached shows what happened when I commented on your status...that's a post from you form 2005 O_O

At first I just thought "Wow, Nate is SO cool he got a bazillion comments in one day!" and then I realized they were from five years ago. xD

I think I figured it out Suzanne. What may have been going on is that your browser hadn't noticed that the javascript file used to power the Feed had been updated, which is exactly how it should act. So I just renamed the file, which forces the browser to download it again. So hopefully no more issues!


Everyone: Just a note of caution, this a very simple feed. With Facebook, they have a very complex algorithm that ranks items in your feed according to a whole host of factors, such as how often you visit that person's profile and how many friends you share with someone else. For YWS, the feed is ranked only by who you are following and the time of the item. I could add more factors, but I don't have the skill to do that efficiently. That is, I could do it more like Facebook does, but I can only do so very inefficiently, meaning the page would take minutes to load.

I'm glad it wasn't a challenge to fix. ^^

For YWS, the feed is ranked only by who you are following and the time of the item.

I actually went through my "following" list yesterday and got rid of people. xD What timing!

Oh, and I noticed that our status messages appear under our names on the profile. I have no words for it. So I'm going to say some overused ones instead: this is awesome.

FEED should stand for something. Friends Exchanging Enlightening Discussions? Freaky Elephants Educating Dogs?

On a related note, I love this FEED so much. I keep thinking I should check Facebook, but this is so much more cool. xD

I want to feed my FEED a sandwich of awesome, but then it might get too awesome it would implode, and we don't want that. xD

I love the FEED, as does everyone else.