The Washington Postannounced earlier this month the launch of a new social networking feature on washingtonpost.com called MyPost. MyPost allows Washington Post commenters to create profiles and add friends.
Our goal is to provide you with a home base on the site, a page where you'll be able to both share and track your thoughts over time. When you post a comment to an article or discussion group, you'll be able to get to your MyPost page by clicking on your MyPost ID just above the comment or by clicking on your ID where it appears in the top left corner of the washingtonpost.com home page.
Other readers will be able to browse to your MyPost page from your comments and, once there, view what you've had to say or ask to message you by sending a "friend request". You'll see those requests on your page -- they won't be visible to others -- and may choose to accept them, turn them down or ignore them.
You'll be able to exchange messages with readers you've accepted as "friends" on the site, and those messages will appear on your page. By default, only you and your friends will be able to see them, although you can open them up to any site visitor by changing the settings in the Profile section of your page. You can also tell others about yourself in your Profile by uploading a photo or filling in a brief bio.
MyPost isn't intended to be MySpace or another general social networking site, but a feature that will make washingtonpost.com more useful to you and others. We'll be adding features to MyPost over the next few months and hope you'll email us with your comments and suggestions.
This is a trend that should start picking up steam and spreading to smaller online newspaper websites. USA Todayrelaunched back in March with new community features including blogs, avatars and profiles. Comments are probably helping the newspaper websites grow traffic and keep people on the newspaper websites longer. Adding profiles and friend features may be another way to keep users regularly visiting newspaper websites.
