Wetpaint Adds Friend Feeds, and Social Networking Tools - SendMeRSS
Posted by elveston priory at 6:22 am
Wetpaint wikis are taking more steps to become like fully-functioning social networks, with the release of several new features that are typically found on social networking sites, moving attention away from the enterprise solutions Wetpaint has recently been working on. Feeds, for instance, seems to be the single-most important feature that any and all social networks are adding to their feature sets for the purpose of making their users more communicative. The feeds will include dashboard and friend updates, so users can have global and personal view of what’s occurring on Wetpaint.
There are also more friend invite options to get others to contribute to wiki material that you’ve worked on, which is of course an integral tool for wikis and speaks to the overall trends we’re seeing in social media collaboration. Custom profiles give more personalization options for wiki users, and a bulked up photo gallery means that media sharing can become more central to users’ activity.
There are a couple of self-promotional features that have been layered into this update, such as the Promote My Site Wizard, which is a “hands-off” way for users to seek out better SEO and traction for their wikis. This is pretty important for those Jericho lovers out there, and others looking to turn their wikis into a web-organism that brings people together to affect change (or just get you more attention).
One feature that is actually sure to make Wetpaint wikis feel more like a social network is the new Compliments option, which lets you dole out kudos to your friends. It’s a very nice version of poking, and will hopefully be used for encouraging purposes, in garnering additional support for continued contributions from other users. These compliments can actually be collected and displayed as awards on your profile, so everyone knows how cool you are.
Some may wonder if wikis really need to move in the direction of social networking as we currently know it, but as more collaborative tools are layered into social networking tools, it’s important on both ends for these efforts to be realized.