Wednesday, 24 July 2002

• Introducing Xanga Personals!

  Heh - stifle the gag reflex, folks. We (the usual suspects and I) had the exact same reaction when this opportunity first presented itself. Let's be honest - to the uninitiated, there's something just a little unsavory about the idea of personals.

  But on a personal note, there are two wonderful people in my life who are laughably happy as a couple and who actually met through the system that now powers Xanga Personals. So I know there has to be something good about this system.

  Testing the Waters

  Some of you may recall a recent spate of banner ads for a different personals system. John posted about them when they launched, to give you a chance to voice your opinions. Overall your comments were pretty supportive. But what you said about those ads paled in comparison to what you did.

  We were just testing the waters, but Xanga reacted with a flood of interest. By the time we stopped running those ads (after making the obvious decision to go ahead with our own personals system), Xangans were signing up for that other personals company at a rate of over 200 users per day!

  OK - Xangans Like Personals, But You Like Your Xanga Sites More! Isn't Personals Just Going to Slow Down the Servers Again?

  Here is the beautiful thing about Xanga Personals: they do not use Xanga's servers. The company that powers Xanga Personals also provides all of the servers and bandwidth necessary to run the entire Xanga Personals area. The only part of the experience that hits Xanga's servers is signing in and signing out with your Xanga Username, which brings us to some other great things about Xanga Personals...

  How Does Xanga Personals Work?

  Xanga Personals works with your existing Xanga Username and Password. If you're a Xanga Member, then you can search or browse all the current personals and even write your own - all for free - just by signing in with your Xanga Username and Password. (The first time you sign in to Xanga Personals, you'll be asked for some basic demographic info - Gender, State, Zip and Age - to help customize your experience. But after that first time, you can just sign straight in and start browsing!)

  Then when you're ready to make contact ("Engage, Mr. Sulu"), you've got three options: email, chat, or phone (I'm not sure if the phone option is fully working yet - if not, it should be working soon). To make contact, you'll need to buy some credits (think of them as "Personals Props" ). But the credits are pretty cheap, and you can get a ton of chat time for just a couple credits. And, of course, a nice percentage of every credit you buy flows straight back to Xanga, so we can continue to add servers, build features, and keep this party rolling!

  Or you can just do what I've been doing for the last few hours - browse away, laugh, be occassionally moved, and feel a little embarrassed at how much fun you're having reading Xanga Personals

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