January 2007

Ma.gnolia Monthly 12: An Extra-Special Upcoming Event

If you go to this Upcoming.org event you'll find details for an event that we're very excited about: Ma.gnolia's first birthday! To celebrate we'll have a packed newsletter, and we're inviting San Francisco-area members and friends to our party, hosted by the awesome folks at Citizen Agency.

But there's something extra special about that Upcoming event. It's the first one added to Ma.gnolia with our slick new Upcoming integration. Now, when you mark an event announced in Upcoming.org, we show information from the event on the bookmark details page. You can read more and see it action at our blog post about this extra-special event. As we get ready to turn one, it's appropriate for us to release this kind of feature. We want Ma.gnolia to be as beneficial and helpful to use as it is beautiful to look at. We feel close to finishing the foundations and ready to start making Ma.gnolia more interesting, especially to those in a professional and organizational settings. Not to worry - the squares aren't taking over. There will still be plenty of flower power to go around, and our focus will still be about making it easy for people to come together around shared goals and aspirations.

We'll talk more about our future direction in the birthday newsletter next month. For this month we're going to talk about new ways to talk with each other and us folks behind Ma.gnolia, follow up on OpenID and cover the usual featured tags and groups.

- The Ma.gnolia Team (support@ma.gnolia.com)

Making Noises: The Ma.gnolia Twitter Page

Twitter.com is a pretty awesome little site that's catching on fast. Kind of like a blog, kind of like an SMS, and kind of addictive! Here at Ma.gnolia we've found it's a great way to make site announcements that are too small for a blog post but too important not to share. If you want to check on our status at any time, and maybe get some early news before it hits anywhere else, then catch us at: http://twitter.com/magnolia.

Come Join the Garden Party!

This month we opened up a Campfire room as a new way for all of us to talk to each other. We're using Campfire, a group chat application that runs in your browser. Joining is as easy as clicking a link: https://gnolia.campfirenow.com/fca9b. We'll post to Twitter whenever we're in the room, so if you have a question for the Ma.gnolia team specifically you will know when to find us there. But for the rest of the time, the room is open to anyone to join in.

Tags of Interest for January

• dna

  You'd think it would be all amino acids and such, but this tag brings out bookmarks ranging from hard science to law to tech and even to art.

• iphone

  We all heard about it, probably a bit too much. Let your fellow members help cut through the noise with bookmarked stories and photos about tech's hottest topic.

• hometheater

  If you're thinking of getting into a home theater setup, what you find with this tag can make you a smarter shopper and help with decoding the technical details.

Featured Groups for December

3D and CGI If you're an artist thinking of or already involved in 3D and CGI technologies, this group is the place to share helpful resources and tips.

Organic Living As we lead up to Earth Day in April, we'll be watching out for more groups like this one, where you can discover and share info about natural food, exercise and green living. Music to our ears.

Personal Development You may or may not have made new year's resolutions, but really any time is the perfect time to develop new skills for life. The Personal Development group is a good stop if you're looking for inspiration or a little help.

Would you like your group featured in the Ma.gnolia Monthly? Let us know by dropping a line to support@ma.gnolia.com.

OpenID is a Hit!

Back at the end of November we introduced OpenID support to Ma.gnolia for both new and existing members. Before meeting with the Mozilla group earlier this week to talk about the OpenID user experience, we ran some numbers and are amazed at the number of new members choosing to sign up by getting an OpenID. Since adding support, 15% of new members are opting to sign up with OpenID!

Considering how new the technology is, and the learning curve that goes with it in a world dominated by separate accounts for separate sites, this is a fantastic adoption rate. If you're asking 'what's OpenID', start out at at our blog announcement: http://ma.gnolia.com/blog/2006/11/30/sign-in-your-way