![Quote](images/misc/quote_icon.png)
Originally Posted by
TechDawgFan
Several people have asked about the friendships, so here goes a bit of an explanation and history.
vBulletin (or forum software) started out as just a message board. It, along with some others, like IPB, are considered some of the better, more advanced, progressive developers of this type of software around. For a long time, people were just looking for a message board. Now, people want more. With the advance of MySpace, Facebook, and some of the other social networking sites, vBulletin saw that they needed to expand their offerings and the capabilities of the software. So about 18 months ago, they came out with their first additional product, vBlog, which is a blogging package that integrates into vBulletin. We have that here so our members CAN blog as well as post on the message board. Now they are starting to take that to another level by adding in Social Networking in the 3.7 release of the software. These functions all tie in together.
The Social networking allows you, the user, to create and join into Social Groups which might have a specific interest to you. In those groups, you can leave messages, post pictures, and interact with people who have the same interest as you. You can also now customize your user profile. You can have more detailed information about yourself in your profile, tie it into your blog, show what social groups you are in, have a member picture (different from an avatar), and even have your own personal photo gallery. People can also leave messages on your profile.
Now the friends concept is something that you can use to restrict access to certain parts of your profile if you want to. So if you have a photo gallery, you can set it up so that only your friends can see it. I believe you can also do that with your blog, but I haven't delved into that. Also, if you go down to the "Members Online" area, your friends will show up differently so you can see if they are online at the same time you are.
I think vB has more coming on the Social Networking side, but I'm not sure. A lot of this isn't being used by our members right now, but I think in the future it will be.
Hope that helps.
Looks like you get the reputation now. To leave a reputation (positive or negative) for someone, click the "scales" underneath their avatar.
Chris