New Release, New Features

Here's the low-down on three super new features we released yesterday:

Following -- You can now follow the browsing activity of your friends on 9Neighbors. This is a great way to filter the content in your community.

We aggregate a lot of content in Cambridge. It's too much for me to consume, but the following feature is helping me solve that problem. When I sign up to follow my friends, I get a feed of links that they enjoyed. This stuff tends to be more interesting to me than the larger body of Cambridge content.

Personalization -- When you sign up to follow friends on 9Neighbors, you'll notice a change on your news page. In addition to the Recent and Popular sorting-method options at the top of the page, you'll see a new Personalized link. This is your page of personally filtered news for that community.

Share a Link -- Over the past few weeks, I've been in a lot of situations where I wanted to share a Cambridge news story with local friends, but wasn't able to because the article wasn't on 9Neighbors. That problem is now solved. If you see something you want to share with other folks in the community, you can now submit it via the link in right column of the news pages.

As always, let us know what you think about these changes -- or anything else on the site. We'd love to hear your feedback. (You can reach us at info *AT* 9neighbors.com.)

What 9Neighbors Is All About (Example #1)

Anybody wondering what 9Neighbors is all about should check out our Cambridge news page today. You'll find it's full of wonderful photos of this weekend's Honk Fest, taken by Flickr user cmurtaugh.



These are fantastic pictures. They give you a real sense of what was going on along Mass Ave today.

9Neighbors is designed to make content like this easy to find.

Site Updates & Berkman Demo

Based on some early feedback, we've made a number of changes and additions to 9Neighbors this week.

Here are the top three:

Better Community Navigation -- It's now very easy to switch between Cambridge and Somerville, or Somerville and Boston, or Boston and Brookline. You get the idea.

Private Option -- 9Neighbors allows you to share your viewing history with other members of your community. But not everybody wants a public viewing history, so it's now possible to make your account "Private" by selecting the appropriate box on the Settings page. Accounts that are Private will not be visible to other users.

Photos -- You can now upload a photo on your profile.

I'm going to be showing the site to the Berkman Blog Group at 7 this evening. If you're in the neighborhood, stop by. (Directions are here.)