Mlive.com, other Advance Internet sites roll out community features

There are non-working bells and whistles - links, too - but Advance Internet rolled out its community-building  upgrade on its sites this weekend on mlive.com, cleveland.com and eight other sites.

You - you being anyone who contributes words, video or photos to a site - can create profiles, follow people, recommend a post (see the illustration below).

Plus, comments are now threaded so you can directly reply to one in a long list.You can even subscribe to a profile or  the comments.

There are also "Popular Tags" boxes on many blogs, like the one I show that came from Runners Finish Line.

You  possibly use an Open Id account to log-in. (Updated 9/21/09 - You can.)

Technically, the upgrade is a move to Movable Type 4.2. I thought we were moving closer to the unveiling, once expected in Flint in June, because of a recent column on al.com.

Joey Kennedy, who has tackled  the roughness of anonymous commenting recently, shared some of the social networking features coming to al.com and the rest of the AdvanceInternet sites.

Actually, most of the detals come from Matt Cuthbert, a web producer for AdvanceInternet. He had offered up some smart advice earlier:

"I try not to let dumb comments get to me. It's hard to weed them out, but in my mind, the smart commenters recognize the dumb ones for what they are."

Alabama got  peak at the new tools  in late July.I got a peak when a potential employer found my name attached to some community-building tools at silive.com, one of the sites in the Advance family. We correctly guessed the work was left from my years of mlive.com work via The Flint Journal.

Cuthbert expects the ability to create profiles  and the ability to display your real name will improve comments.

We hope, too, that the changes will help dissuade some of the spammers and trolls (though we're not foolish -- we know they'll always be there) because the user profiles will build reputation. If you're always a loudmouth jerk in the comments, people can see it on your page. If that's the sort of reputation someone builds, they won't find themselves with many people listening

Plus, you may discover new things.

"By following the activity of your favorite people, you'll be able to weed out some of the garbage. You'll discover new things that you might not otherwise have seen, based on the recommendations of your peers."

Here's more of his explanation from that column:

"A simple way to explain it is that we're adding social networking to the site. In that sense, we'll have features similar to Facebook or Twitter where you'll be able to follow the activities of your favorite newspaper columnists, beat writers, photographers, etc., and also other users. So if you think AcidReign is a sharp commenter, you can keep up with everything he/she says. Likewise, other users can follow your activity as well."

"But we're not trying to be Facebook. Far from it. We're simply adopting elements of social networking that will hopefully make your experience on al.com better."

I wanted to see if the same user name will work across all of the sites. Unfortunately, I don't remember tge password for the login Advance chose for me and the password recovery system wasn't working Saturday night. I've got two other user names, but both only get me errors. I also wanted to see about using my Google, AIM or Livejournal accounts, options explained in the Frequently Asked Questions.  section.

The upgrade is started at the following Advance Publications Advance Internet sites al.com, lehighvalleylive.com,   masslive.com,    mlive.com, nj.com,  nola.com, oregonlive.com, pennlive.com, silive.com, syracuse.com, 

So, I'll try to be patient as the sites hurry to change the generic links to the site links in the how-to pieces and get the rest of the updates pieces working. It's a long overdue improvement.

Anyone want to guess which print-affiliated staff person will put up a photo with their profile first?
(let's make it more of a challenge - the first print-affiliated staff person who is NOT the online person too. That leaves out Bernie Eng in midMichigan, and and Brian Cubbison  (with his two profiles) in Syracuse and Jerry Casey in Oregon and Lynn Cunningham in New Orleans, among others.)

You will find  Donnie Webb and Dave Rahme over at syracuse.com