When I had joined MS I wasn’t sure what it was all about. I stumbled across this site through some search I did for the book "Five Point Someone". My account was created & forgotten. It was last year that I was really active here. Slowly but gradually my writings increased. In the meanwhile I was also introduced to Blogging but I never showed any serious interest towards it.reason being hesitation, the concern who will read and all.
With the interaction increasing here sometime we used to discuss that there is a need of a community center where we can discuss anything under the sun. Serious concerns too have always been there with the usage of site. As in, people have always protested that this is a "Product Review Site" and how are people throwing away advices on impressing woman or managing traffic. Basically two different schools of thoughts. This always has been a major argument out here. What was missing was a reply or response from the horse’s mouth, i.e. "Mouthshut".
But today morning there was a response and an apt one.there has been a major overhauling in the profile page. I have already fallen in love with it and I would love to share the details with you all. I’ll be summarizing the new Profile Page.
* ~Dashboard~
Its has the link to your profile
It shows the Current Contests being run.
And last but not the least it shows who has visited your profile and this is the thing that I hate most. Somehow I had always liked the fact that nobody can keep a tab on me and neither can I keep a tab on anybody. The comfort of not being traced will be missed. The worst part is I can not disable it as is the case in Orkut.Or can it be disabled? Please Help!
*~My Profile~
It’s the same old page with a difference. The stuff has been jumbled here & there. I’ll just talk about what’s different here.
$ The Trusted Circle comes with the picture of the person.(Is that the reason that the page takes time to get loaded?)
$ Favorites This is the new thing added. It gives you a scope talk about your favourite dish, movie, book etc.
$ Your Profile page has the link to your posts & Diary.(Will talk about them later)
Primarily these are the changes visible to me otherwise we still have our interests, Wish list etc.
*~ M2M~
It again is the same old wine in new bottle;-) but what I couldn’t understand was **Send Bulletin. Can anybody throw some light on it?
~My Diary~
*This is the best thing that has happened to MS. Many a people have had at some point missed the freedom to write anything under the sun without being policed at. Diary, I hope Shuts mouths. I think this is MS’s answer to blogging.
Here you can put as many entries as you want, you can add pictures, embedded videos. If am not wrong here you can put links of your videos in dekhona.com. Which means this is a tie up between MS & Dekhona.
You have an option to show the diary entry to all or only for your trusted circle.
You can also make several folders and post your entries under the folder. Which means you can classify your entries.
People can comment on your post/ diary.
There is a hitch? Yes quite a few…
: You can not delete a diary entry
: If a person has set an alert on new reviews from you he/ she will get an alert for any diary entry you make. This can be a nuisance.
I hope something is done about the two concerns.
~My Photos~
You can add as many photos as you want. The size allowed(per snap) is 3 MB. Isn’t it cool?
People can leave a comment for your snap and your snap can be rated too on a scale of 1-9 and Hot;-)
~ My Reviews~
It’s the usual. You have an option of going back to old format. But yes under each of your review you see two figures. The upper one is “No. of read’” and the other one is “No of comments”. You can also view your “Draft reviews here”.
~ My Comments~
Here you find comments posted by you & comments posted to you. Though former I understand, I can not understand the significance of later. I mean all the comments that you have received are already there in your reviews, isn’t it Redundant? Plus each comment comes with the pic of the MSian, which makes the site heavy & slow. What say?
PS I just noticed that against the comments there are few symbols which come P, D, R.which denotes where You have posted the comment bole to.
P= Post
D = Diary
R= Review.
Confusion? more to come.
~ My Trusted Circle~
It comes with the tabs of people you trust/ distrust & people who trust/ distrust you. What’s new? Well here you get a summary of reviews written by the MSian and an option to send an M2M(previously we needed to visit the person’s profile to send an M2M) and an option to gift.
When you click on gift there is a collection of dummy gift against the price of your points. This certainly needs more clarification. I mean for the fun of it I can gift a cup of coffee to Shanti & a cactus Plant to spike but am I loosing onto my points which can be used later?
~ Gifts & MS Points~
This one gives us the summary of MS points & and the gifts received & sent. Not of much use;-)
~ My Settings~
It is the usual mix of Mail Alerts, Site Filters and Change Password etc.
What’s new?
You can choose a Skin(As in Look) for your diary though there are just two options and both look similar to me.
Secondly you can choose a color palette for your profile, so Pinky I am;-)
When you are Visiting somebody else’s profile you can view the Profile, Reviews, Diary, Photo Gallery & Trusted Circle tab by tab.Its just above the picture of the person(Am telling this because it took me good ten minutes to find it)
I have tried to key in & share my limited knowledge here. The purpose being, make things simple for others;-),
I know there will be questions like "Is MS loosing its focus of being a Consumer Review Site"? etc etc. My views are very clear, If this is the path that MS people have choosen then let it be. At the end of the day its their baby.
For me MS means freedom to write my views and by adding the new dimensions the freedom has only increased. There might be some glitches in it right now but then anything new comes with some problems, lets give it a breathing space, explore it and enjoy the change. There will be many people who will not like the new interface but then it has its own advantages. I for sure AM LOVING IT;-)
PS I know its too many reviews from me but couldn’t help ignoring this timely review.