The team at blog network/ community 9rules has long been known for its innovative community features, from 9rules notes, an in house sub-blogging solution, its well known community forums, and its kick ass Web 2.0 content aggregation features. New off the block from 9rules is my.9rules, a much broader social networking offering that incorporates 9rules notes into a friend sharing network, with individual profiles, external content sharing (Flickr, del.icioi.us etc) and user ratings.

It’s hard to describe exactly what my.9rules is, Paul Scrivens describes it as a “feature” of 9rules as opposed to being a full blown social network, and yet as he notes himself it does basically everything other social networks do.

Feeling wise, it doesn’t remind me so much of MySpace, but of SixApart’s Vox, although this could be more of a reflection of the high quality aesthetics both my.9rules and Vox share.

Inside my.9rules, all is extremely well laid out. The first page presents the latest notes in the system, highest rank users, and an ecosystem chart that brings an innovative twist to tag clouds. In the beauty of it all though I can find one criticism, in that the navigation options are not immediately obvious on the page, and indeed as I shortly found out, by going back to the main page I’d become logged out, it’s early days though, and in the bigger picture of things this is only a small bug.

At the user page you are presented with a variety of options, many of which would be familiar to users of existing social networks: a profile tab, friends tab, points, messages and favorites. Paul Scrivens, along with Mike Rundle and Tyme White are all included automatically as friends. Although I’ve had my run ins in the past with Scrivens back when he was thinking about entering the porn business, every single page of my.9rules is eye candy to the max, and in retrospect such a decent judge of visual pleasure would have done extremely well in the adult game.

Via email Mike Rundle has said to me that it’s early days yet, and that the 9rules team has a lot more planned for the service. As it stands currently the service stands very well into what is already an extremely crowded social networking marketplace. Any improvements to the service in future could literally see the creation of a 100 pound gorilla that has the potential to become a serious player in the bigger market, where as currently they are the undisputed leader within the blogging community.

Recommended.

And if you are looking for an invite let me know, comments or email to nichenet @ gmail . com, I’m not sure how many invites I get for the service but at the moment it’s showing I have invites available.

Related posts:

1. 9rules sells up to Splashpress Media
2. Why Blog Networks Failed
3. LinkBlitz: 9rules Edition
4. 9rules Blog Network Open for Submissions
5. 9rules still sorting through its fifth round of sites

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