Here are some of the features we are working on completing before we go public beta

As noted, we're currently hard at work on a number of features and fixes to socialmedian before we go from private alpha (current) to public beta (start of our new future).

Here are some of the features we are going to complete before moving to beta:

• Major enhancements to creating a well functioning News Network on socialmedian.  A simple wizard which walks the user through a few easy steps.  Will function more like saving a search than does today.  Selecting topics and sources will be much simplified.  Behind the scenes we're also implementing a whole new search technology based on Lucene, which I'm sure many are familiar with.
  
  
• Tools to spiffy up your News Network:
• Picture
• Description
• Welcome message to new members of your news network
• Something we're really excited about:  A Volume bar which allows any user to adjust the nosie level of a news network up and down as they like.  Want more stories? Turn up the volume and we'll be more lenient in our search algorithms.  Want fewer stories?  Turn it down and we'll focus on a tight search.
  
  
• A new homepage
  
  
• Fixes and enhancements to suggested Newsmakers
  
  
• New "get started guide" to help new users get going on socialmedian step-by-step
  
  
• An in-box sorta thing to help you track which news networks you've been invited to.  We'll expand on this more in the future.
  
  
• A bunch of usability fixes and enhancements.
  
  
• And, a cool twitter feature that i'm not going to reveal just yet.
  

Fingers crossed that all goes well.

We'll update again as we get closer to it.