This is a new feature we've been working on for a while, and it will probably always be a work in progress to some degree -- But IMHO, it's one of the most important ones we've rolled in some time. I consider it a quantum leap, but we'll tweak and refine constantly based on your feedback.

We've made some big enhancements in user profiles. If you're generally web-savvy and/or familiar with social networking sites like Facebook, then you may want to skip all this and just go play around. (There are, however, different choices, particularly in the concept of favoriting vs. friending that we made and that I cover below.)

For this to matter to you at all, you need to be a registered user. So take care of that piece of business before going further.

From the big picture, what we've done is made it easier for you to keep up with the things -- and more importantly, the people -- that most interest you.

First difference you'll notice is on the homepage. The "Your Neighborhood" box has been renamed "Recently" and split to include a new section that shows what users whom you have favorited have done on the site.

Beyond that, there are two key components we've added to user profiles: Your profile and your friends' (or others') profiles. (I think it goes without saying, but everything below is a static screenshot. To play around and click links, you'll need to dig into live profiles on the site.)

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Your Profile

You get to your profile by clicking "See more" on the recent activity or the "Your profile" link on the site header.

The result, hopefully, looks a helluva lot better than the admittedly spartan profiles we had up until now. You can get the full view on your page, but here's some of the main components broken down:

The center body currently shows what other users whom you have marked as favorites have done recently on the site. It's not entirely unlike the news feed on Facebook. We've got a lot of ideas for other things to include in this area, but we're going to start here and see what else you might want.

The first part of the left rail provides you some personal account management tools. You can edit your profile, view it as others see it, change your password, become verified, add or change addresses for geotargeting features, manage search alerts, edit your playlists and see who has favorited you.

You can also upload a photo that will serve as an avatar on your profile and on any comments you post on the site.

There is a linked list of any contributions you have made to Pegasus News, whether those are reviews, comments, playlists or just about anything else.

The "Your Favorites" box gives you the opportunity to manage and check in on your favorite people, places and things in the DFW area. Anything you've tagged as a favorite goes into these lists.

And the lists themselves are more than static rows of items. They are sortable by a number of factors, like genre of music or cuisine; like recent stories and comments posted on them; and like upcoming events or drink specials there.

For instance, here's a screenshot of part of my list of favorite restaurants:

I can't stress enough how much interesting stuff you'll find if you favorite a few things and check these updates. I live on the site and I just burned an hour exploring through this and found several events I want to attend in the next few weeks.

The final part of your profile page (for now) is the "Upcoming Events" at the bottom left.

This list includes upcoming events that you have directly favorited as well as events at places you have favorited and events that feature bands or organizations you have favorited.

In my case, I'd favorited Adairs (the place), Erykah Badu (the band), WaterTower Theatre (the organization performing Almost, Maine) and the specific Shibboleth show.

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Other people's profiles

When looking at other people's profiles, you'll see a lot of the same information, just presented differently. Here's mine:

You can see some basic information about me, including who my favorites are, info I've put into my public profile and actions I've taken around the site. There's a mechanism to contact the user without gaining access to their email address.

We see these profiles as they stand today as a good way to keep up with the local things your friends are into and a way to learn from the tastes of other folks who use the site -- many of whom you may already feel you know via the comment boards.

Obviously, there's additional functionality we can and should add to these pages, but we're starting with what we know we can manage. We'll be taking requests and will add more as we can. Early contenders are some free-text areas; Flickr, Facebook and Last.fm links and maybe comments or even blogs. We're trying to be careful to balance useful functionality with our focus on local above all else -- all while avoiding the deluge of profile spam inherent in most social networks.

By the way, IF you want to obscure your profile information from users whom you have not approved as favorite-ers, you can do so here by checking the box that says "Set my profile to private." We really hope you won't do that though -- if you follow the favoriting discussion below, we think you'll see that your public profile isn't invasive and allows you to participate in the community here more fully.

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A word about favoriting users:

Favorites are not necessarily friends.

I can't stress that enough. There are benefits to "friends" on social networks, but there were also some key liabilities we were trying to avoid. One is that with relatively benign info like favorite restaurants, bands, etc, it's a hassle to have to approve a ton of friend requests. A bigger one is that accepting one as a friend means that you are then subjected, with varying levels of invasiveness, to every thought, action and whimsy of that "friend," as well as an endless series of crapplications that they (or some developers who hooked them) want you to add to your profile. Friendship is generally a two-way street.

"Favoriting," in contrast, is a one-way deal. Just because someone favorites you or views your profile, doesn't mean that you are subjected to anything from them. In fact, although you can always look to see who has marked you as a favorite, you can choose to be blissfully unaware of them. Further, you're not subjected to that constant dilemma of whether or not you accept that casual acquaintance or business contact as "a friend."

Here's how that works practically: Let's say you've read a lot of Rawlins Gilliland's comments on the site and find that you're generally simpatico with him, or at least admire his taste. You can favorite him and follow his comments on the site and benefit from his knowledge of traditional Mexican restaurants. You can do so, even though he may not know you from Adam. And he doesn't have to be inflicted with your (assuredly excellent) tastes unless he reciprocates by favoriting you. Now we hope that like many others, y'all will become true friends by using the site, but if not, you can still benefit.

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A few final words before wrapping up this long tutorial-- I'll be posting a feature wishlist and idea submission on the Work in Progress blog later tonight or tomorrow. So while you should feel free to comment here, that will be the "official" list. However, be aware that after a few little tweaks, the dev team will be diving into another mission-critical project for the next few weeks, so we'll be taking that time to get our sea legs with these features before a lot of new stuff pops up.

And speaking of the dev team, a big round of applause is due for Jeremy, Brett and David who sweated over this; persevered in the face of a server failure; and went the extra furlong to ensure that you could post your photo without taking down the whole site.

One of our missions with Pegasus News is to use the Interwebs to get people to leave their homes and offices more often to interact in realtime with their local community. We hope that this is another great tool to help make that happen.

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