Social networking sites abound all over the Internet these days. That’s why, when a new social networking site and concept arrive on the scene, it’s always interesting to take a look and see how they will attempt to set themselves apart.
Evemi, a social network still in beta mode, is one of the newest sites on the scene. Rather than make connections based upon physical factors and already established connections, Evemi links you with others who share one or more of your interests. Traditional social networking tools, like location-based connections, are sure to become more of a focus as the number of users increases, but for the time being, Evemi is a unique new site. Stick with me after the jump to learn more about this interesting new site and what I think of it.
Getting Started
Once you sign up for your account with Evemi, the first thing that you are asked to do is to select some interests. Evemi makes connections and populates your feed based upon the interests that you follow. Popular interests to choose from include things like art, cupcakes and technology.
Step 1 – liking interests. Definitely an important step!
After you add some interests, you are also given the option to follow some similar users. There aren’t a lot of users yet, so the selection is still fairly limited at this time. I actually chose to opt out of following users at the very beginning, choosing instead to wait until I found some interesting users while browsing the site.
Step 2 – following similar users, though I chose to skip this step initially.
Once you have found some users and interests to follow, you are taken to your main feed. The feed shows a curated selection of posts from interests and users on your list. A nice aspect of Evemi is that even with a fairly limited user base, thanks to the idea of following interests, your feed is immediately populated with interesting information and posts.
The main user feed.
Using Evemi
Once the set-up is complete, it’s time to figure out how to truly use Evemi. Like many new social networking sites, Evemi has a unique overall concept but borrows some features from other, established sites. One feature is hashtags, utilized at Evemi to represent interests. If you wish to post to a certain interest page, just type “#” followed by the interest name. If the interest doesn’t have a page yet, the page is automatically created when you finalize and publish the post.
Clicking on a hashtag takes you to that interest page. Here, you can see (in chronological order) all the posts that have been made for that particular interest. Interest pages are the easiest way to view relevant content and find additional content to follow. Not only can you view cool posts and follow other users, there is also a “similar interests” box on each interest page which allows you to follow more interests with just one click.
The interest page for #design.
If you can’t find enough interests to follow from the similar interests boxes and hashtags in other posts, Evemi also offers an explore section. The explore page links to the most popular interests in Evemi. You can also get an overview of how many people contribute to the interest and who is contributing.
Utilize explore if you can’t think of an interest to search on your own, or just want to see what’s popular.
Communication within the site is done primarily via the posts, although private messaging does exist. You can comment/reply to and like every post on the site – nothing is restricted because of privacy concerns. You can also choose to “repost” any post you see, although there aren’t really enough users yet to make that an incredibly useful feature. If you wish to interact with other users on the posts, it is done via another familiar symbol – @. You simply type @, followed by the user’s name and you can easily tag them in posts and interact via conversations on the posts.
Communicating with other users via the @ symbol.
If you wish to contribute your own content, it’s easy to do. First, you can easily post from any feed page in Evemi. If you choose this option you can copy/paste links, enter text and upload images directly from your computer. Like many other sites these days, Evemi also offers a bookmarklet which allows you to post from any site you might be browsing. This is definitely a great tool for convenience and I’m glad it’s available.
Posting – I just wish it could preview while you typed.
Making it Better
Evemi is still in limited beta, so the user base is quite small at this point. Of course one of the things that Evemi needs to do to improve in the long-term is to increase the number of users. That being said, Evemi is still an interesting site with great potential, at least in the short term, regardless of the number of users.
That’s not to say, however, that Evemi can’t use a few improvements. Big changes are coming, according to the site’s creator. Here are a few improvements that I hope to see as Evemi grows and matures.
First is a simple improvement – a link to the goodies page. For quite a long time while working on this review, I had a note about how it was frustrating that there wasn’t a bookmarklet available for easy posting from other sites. Of course, there is a bookmarklet readily available. It’s just hidden away, located only via a link I found in the help section. That’s also where information is available about mobile access to the site.
Another feature I’d really like to see is the ability to preview posts while you are typing them. I’m (and most of you, I’m sure) so accustomed to the way posting on Facebook works that it feels strange to be on a similar site and not have the ability to preview what the link you paste in will display like, or how the picture you’re posting is going to look at full size. This is definitely a feature I really want to see, as it is going to make posting more intuitive.
Lastly, I have less of a critique and more of a question. In the help section, regarding an official mobile app, the site states that:
We will be making an iphone app soon which will allow you to upload/take photos with evemi and recieve push notifications for mentions, however this is not our main priority at the moment as we feel some social networks are too easy to post to and we want to make sure that posts to evemi are more considered.
I’m curious to see how that mentality works out. I really like the ability to easily create posts, definitely more than a set-up which makes it harder for me to share content. I’m definitely interested to see how this mentality affects the site and whether it affects all posting or just “less thoughtful” posting.If it works in their favor, I’m excited to see what shared content looks like on Evemi versus other, similar networking sites.
Wrapping Up
Evemi is an interesting new social networking site based upon common interests. It is a somewhat unique twist on many sites that most people already know and utilize. Evemi is not without flaws – increasing the number of users and working towards a better, easier to understand interface are definitely things that need to be done for Evemi to be a long-term success.
All in all though, it has a fair amount of potential down the line. It remains to be seen, however, whether or not people will make time for an additional social networking site in their lives.
I’d love to hear your thoughts about the site. What do you think of Evemi? Are you going to try it? Do you think it has long-term potential? Share your thoughts in the comments below.