Fo.rtuito.us, a service I wrote about back in May, will be relaunching as Friends4Days.com on Monday. The relaunch marks a name change for the company and a host of new features and additions to the service, including a blogging system.
For those who’ve yet to try the service, the idea behind Fo.rtuito.us is simple. Upon registering, you’re randomly introduced to another Fo.rtuito.us member — without the influence of factors such as age, sex, and race. You then have four days to get in contact with the member (hence the new name, Friends4Days), and after those four days it’s up to you to either stay friends with them, in which case they’re added to your permanent friends list, or move on. Either way, the process is repeated.
The most significant addition to the relaunch is a blogging system throughout the site, dubbed Journals. Each member has one, and they can decide whether to make entries public, for everyone to see, or private, only for friends as such. Notably, this feature was written completely in AJAX and as a result a quick on-the-fly editing system can be used, as well as the option to toggle the post from being ‘diggable’ and ‘public.’ Members can also subscribe to others’ journal and receive updates through their ‘What’s New’ section, where they’ll also see new comments, messages, and updates to the site.
Another notable addition is the ability to tag friends and edit those tags through the AJAX-based on-the-fly editing system. The idea of tagging ‘people’ has been a unique and popular feature since day one for Fo.rtuito.us. This page strikes particularly interesting to me, where the most popular tags through the system can be seen. ‘Male’ and ‘Female’ seem to equally be at the top, followed by ‘Friendly,’ ‘Interesting,’ and ‘Student.’ This is a good indication as to the type of people who are using the service, and perhaps others like it.
To this day, I still have trouble placing dots in del.icio.us, so I’m very glad they’ve gone for the name change: you can bet Friends4Days.com is a hundred times easier to spell, and you don’t have to remember any dots. Their branding might need time to recuperate, but it’s a step in the right direction. The new additions are fairly light, but much needed as well. Fo.rtuito.us, or Friends4Days as it is now called, has always seemed like an interesting and unique twist to social networking for me. It’s a great way to meet new people and simply let serendipity guide you towards it.
[tags]Fortuitous, Friends4Days, Social Networks, Upgrades & Relaunches[/tags]
