The Day I Joined Dandelife − 31 July, 2006

Ah, what the hell right? Everyone else is doing it.

I go to the site i-am-bored.com alot and on this day I saw a link to Dandelife and alot of good comments saying how it was a great idea.

I showed up, signed up and wrote my first story. Coincedently, the story My Birth Day. I wrote it as a funny story with the perspective that I had actually remembered my own birth.

I wrote other stories and more and more until, all of the sudden, I noticed that I was one of the most storied users with about 25. I continued writing and even got in some arguments with my fiance as to how many actual vivid memories I have of previous "people." (I hadn't yet written about us because I was into "the memory thing." After we discussed the issue I wanted to show her how important my present is, so I added more recent stories too.)

I began reading other stories and I absolutely hate the fact that people write stories that consist of ",,," it's my pet-peeve and I do my best to prod these people into sharing more stories by using the comment feature in a tactful way. I'd hate to scare people away.

Basically, these individuals are writing notes to themselves so that they are aware of when things occured. Totally missing the point of Dandelife being a social networking site.

Around the middle of June, I recognized a familiar name on Dandelife. i thought to myself, "I went to high school with a Scott Wilder, it can't be." I clicked on the name and there was a picture of him. It was actually him. He even wrote a story about me too. I was hooked ever since on Dandelife's capabilities.

Ever since, I've been putting stories online and telling alot about myself in hopes that I find more people to catch up with.

I have a few projects on Dandelife now besides writing stories:

1. Rework my tags and add more as well, so that my stories are easier to find.

2. Interlink my stories (besides the Previous and Next option, so that my timeline, now matter how much it may jump around, it still remains fluid. This includes making every story HTML friendly. I noticed a small "feature" that once you enter one bit of HTML code it renders your text-style spacing mute and you must use "BR" tags to make a story readable.

3. Get listed under "Most Popular." I have a feeling that in the next few days this might happen.

4. Become more active on the forum and help others.

I think Dandelife will get better and better and I believe eventually that it'll become a free for basic use, premium for ultimate use site. But until then, I'll ride the wave of improvements, growing pains, and bugs that a beta site goes through.