~ THIS REVIEW IS DEDICATED TO ALL MOUTHSHUT MEMBERS AND THE ENTIRE MOUTHSHUT TEAM ~
I haven’t completed a year on Mouthshut today, its not the CEO’s Birthday today and neither have I reached the 100 / 75 / 50 landmark, this review is just because I felt like paying a tribute to the website that makes people fall in love with it, at first click -with its simplicity and contents, that has got so many hopelessly addicted, that has members spend all of their online hours here, that has made friends out of complete strangers, that is the BEST place to be on the world wide web!
~ A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.~
~ The Beginning ~
Little did I realize that when I landed on this site for the first time, searching for a feedback on Kihim beach in January, a journey of a lifetime had begun….but this time with a single CLICK !
I took that trip to Kihim, and the first thing I did on coming back was write a review (or a feeble attempt at writing a review) on the same. It was a shaky attempt, like the wobbly steps of a child learning to walk its first steps. Like parents who would grasp the tiny hands of the child, older members from Mouthshut guided me, taught me, showed me directions, instilled confidence…..and oodles of encouragement by way of Comments, and M2Ms.
In a few weeks, Mouthshut.com had become my home on the internet, Reading, Rating, Commenting all reviews that caught my interest, in every free minute that I got. It caught me like fever and the feeling was similar to “The only remedy for love Is to Love more! “, so the only cure for this fever was to read, write and comment more.
All this activity had many side-effects….firstly people started adding me to their trust list….a very slow movement though, I hadn’t made any major splashes here anyway, and though TRUST list hasn’t got much to do with TRUST as such, but the name must have been so carefully chosen by the Mouthshut team, that it has infinite FEEL-GOOD factor, even today when my trust list increases from 71 to 72, I rush to find out who is this one person who finds me worthy enough to add to his/her list of important people on MS!
Mouthshut happened to me at a time, when a few (or rather most) real-life relationships had abruptly taken the U-turn off my Life’s road and I had plenty of time to spend online, and once again I realized how when one window closes on you, so many doors open up…….and if a door doesn’t open, God makes sure he tears the roof and showers his love on you. I found such wonderful people here, caring brothers in Reeps (Disskonnekt), Karan and Davie, Sumit (deja-vu) utmost of love from friends like Ganesh, Santoz (my 1st friend on MS), RJ ( just thinking of her Maggie-noodles hair-makes me burst into peals) and Prem, Maddy who went all out in making my small idea of a REAL LIFE MS meet into a reality. Mouthshut became a platform for likeminded people to interact, take relationships from the VIRTUAL to REAL world, sharing secrets, apprehensions, joys and achievements in addition to exchanging jokes and ring tones on SMS
~ The Support System ~
Mouthshut builds a solid support system, a beating board to voice your thoughts, letting people know the REAL you through your writings, its like baring your soul to a whole group of people in whom you have loads of trust, and who are not just Hyperlinks on a site but are part of your Real-life and who will be around when you need them. I remember so vividly, when I was absolutely lonely one Sunday afternoon, how I could just pick up the phone and dial this MS friend’s number ( luckily his mobile service provider-which he badly tore-apart in one of his reviews here, was working very faithfully that day- or was it my POSITIVE ENERGY at work?? ) and he agreed to meet me right away, and over steaming hot idlis and dosas and Sambar UNLIMITED, he just let me speak my heart out!! Small things in life, but an unforgettable gesture of friendship and caring !
~ The Security ~
Unlike rest of the virtual world, people on Mouthshut are all for real, we don’t even fear posting our REAL SNAPS, REAL NAMES, REAL mail-ids. Mouthshut is probably one of the few safe havens on the net where people wouldn’t abuse or take advantage of so many realities disclosed unabashedly in the big-bad-virtual-world. What never fails to amaze me is that, this is probably one of those rare sites where the members’ postings land straight on the homepage, without any editing by the Webmasters. The trust that Mouthshut has placed in its members for using decent language and posting our thoughts openly – is indeed laudable. No wonder, most members (read that as 99.9% ) live up to that trust. Mouthshut Cleanliness Drive also ensures that members themselves keep watch on anyone posting foul material, copied material, any stuff that would hurt peoples’, nations’ sentiments, and the action taken by the Mouthshut Team is indeed prompt.
~ The Interaction ~
The level of interaction that the Mouthshut team maintains with its members is so admirable. The promptness with which they add a product you want to review (MOUTH PAD ) , or how they take action to rectify an error reflects their completely professional attitude. Once when this site experienced an outage for around 48 hours, and I had one review ready to be posted, it was so much frustrating, it felt like the doors to my home were closed and the keys were lost. Emails to the CEO-Faisal and the MS team were answered so graciously, which site would go to this extent of Customer Support? I’m sure, even any PAID websites cant match this level of customer help. A site where the CEO actually reads what the members write, and even goes to the extent of posting encouraging comments is so heartwarming.
Faisal, I know you have set alerts to all reviews on MS and while you are reading this, I would like to give my heartfelt thanks for conceiving and implementing this most remarkable idea called Mouthshut that opens our minds, and stays close to our hearts. We are indeed lucky to be a part of this lovely family called MOUTHSHUT !
May this online source of happiness and support always be with us ………..