Facebook and Twitter Integration/Brandon's Blog

You can now associate your 17th Shard account with Facebook or Twitter. Or both!

New members can simply log in to 17th Shard with those accounts. For everyone else, you can associate your accounts by clicking on the dropdown menu at the top right, My Settings -> Profile -> Manage Facebook/Twitter Connect.

Now, you might be wondering why this even matters. This is a valid point. If you hate social networking, then feel free to disregard this entirely. But maybe you've already realized that the new 17th Shard software is kind of like a social network already. You can post status messages. You can friend other members. You can start a blog. Pretty much everywhere, you can upvote or downvote people's posts, whether it is in the forums, the gallery, or the blog. Kerry has lovingly nicknamed the site ShardBook. It's addicting.

So if you're like me and hate having too much social networking, integrating accounts is your best friend. Now when I send out a tweet, it will update my 17S wall. There are plenty of options in the Facebook/Twitter connect areas. You can go crazy with integration, if that's your cup of tea, and if not, you can be minimalistic about it. Heck, I'm satisfied with the options, and you know I'd be the first to complain about them if they were lame.

Next up, our lovely Kerry has done some skinning on the Blogs so they are more readable and match the rest of the site. Give her a round of applause. A few members are already using the Blog features, which makes me so happy. The real reason for having Blogs, however, is so we can mirror Brandon's blog to the site. Did you ever think you wanted to comment on one of his blog posts? Now you can do all of that. I'm entertained that IPB decided to retroactively post a lot of the blog posts. Obviously we've had this new system up since December, right?

A few people have already noted the mysterious account named Brandon, with a bold-faced gold text. Unfortunately, this is not Brandon himself, but rather my robot account I'm using to make his Blog. Perhaps some day, Brandon may use that account, but don't hold your breath. He's more than slightly busy.

All in all, things are coming together rather nicely on the site.