Your HuffPost Experience Is About to Get A Lot More Social!

I'm excited to announce the launch of HuffPost Social News -- a collaboration with Facebook that connects HuffPost users to their Facebook friends, the news they are reading, and the stories they are commenting on.

When you sign up for it -- and I hope you will right now -- HuffPost Social News finds your Facebook friends who are also reading HuffPost and links you together on our site so you can dive deeper into the stories you like best. (But don't worry, you'll still have complete control over what stories and comments are shared with your friends, as well as what goes on your Facebook wall, and into your friends' news feeds. See details at end of post.)

The explosive growth of online social networking has fundamentally changed our relationship with news. It's no longer something we passively take in. We now engage with news, react to news, and share news. News has become an important element of community -- something around which we gather, connect, and converse. And we can all become part of the evolution of a story now -- expanding it with comments and links to relevant information, adding facts and differing points of view.

HuffPost Social News makes this easier and more dynamic than ever. It takes social news to a whole new level. It will turbo-charge your online conversations and connections, and allow you to build and develop a community that follows what you read and care about.

Thanks to your passion and commitment, HuffPost has an incredibly active and vibrant community. You posted over 1.7 million comments on the site last month alone -- with many stories attracting more than 10,000 comments. The one drawback: it's sometimes hard to keep up with it all.

With HuffPost Social News, you can be sure that your comments won't get lost in the mix -- and that the people you care most about will see what you have to say about the stories you love or are angered by, delivered in real time. And you'll be able to easily and immediately see who is replying to any of your comments. Of course, your comments will still appear on the full thread, so anyone reading HuffPost will be able to see them.

HuffPost Social News also taps into the other coming big trend in news: personalization. People connecting to each other using their real identities and having real conversations.

HuffPost Social News allows you to have a greater presence on our site by automatically creating personalized profile pages that keep track of all your HuffPost Social News friends -- collecting all the comments you have made and the stories you have read, as well as the comments made and stories read by your friends. Think of it as HuffPost's new digital water cooler.

HuffPost Social News is just one early piece of the social transformation of the news industry. We will be adding more social features and personalization in the coming months. The news is simply more interesting and engaging when we experience it with friends. It is an exciting change and we are thrilled to be part of it.

Sign up here to get started. And let us know what you think. HuffPost Social News is your Huffington Post.

A few notes about Social News:

What you're reading will not appear on Facebook unless you hit the "Like" button or the "Facebook Share" button.

The articles you have read and the comments you have made will only automatically show up on HuffPost -- and will be viewable only by your friends who have also joined HuffPost Social News.

If you don't want people to see a story you have viewed, you can remove it from your list of recent activity. You can also place yourself in "Stealth Mode" before you read it.

Follow Arianna Huffington on Twitter: www.twitter.com/ariannahuff

Comments

[Mukesh Bharti]

All comments are moderated.

[Mukesh Bharti]

Hi All

[Will Ruben]

Cool new huff post feature

[Will Ruben]

Cool feature new on huffington post.

[Beegood]

This happened while I was on vacation AND I HATE IT!!!!!
Now every time I comment I have to say I don't want it posted to my husbands stupid facebook page. I think facebook is crap!!!
HP get me out if this arrangement!!!! I didn't sign up and don't have any interest in it!!!! Some idiot that my husband went to high school with is now a fan of mine, and I A FAN OF HIS!!!! All without my doing anything. P.S. This guy has never even made a comment to HP, how is he here???

Get out of my social life plz.

[TanzaniteDiamonds]

Now that one takes the cake!? That's downright awful. What a PITA!! Have they responded as to how to get "out of this arrangement"?

[John Catalano]

I just joined today. Leave it to HuffingtonPost to come up with an even more open dialogue for discussing the news. It will be interesting to see how this pans out.

[DonRoberto]

Still a couple of bugs to work out I see!

Someone needs to re-sort the comments and replies to order them by thread, not be comment. Currently multiple comments within a thread are displayed by descending order of the comment, so replies to a reply are listed separately, which is very confusing to those trying to decipher the sequence of posts.

You also need to fix the counts of "fans" --- number of fans is still incorrectly reported above each comment. Also, don't automatically count "friends" as "fans".

These minor criticisms aside, a great effort I will continue to use!

[denisecchiang]

I wish HuffPost would give me a job.

[Lahonda]

Politics mixed with family and friends... let me think. No.

[Jyoti Naik]

agreed :-). HP wasting efforts instead of speeding up moderation.

[Aliksa]

Well, I'm willing to give this a try and see if I like how it works and what it generates. I have come to really respect Arianna H. based on her comments on Keith Olberman's show on MSNBC. Always very insightful and clear.

[heyletsevolve]

I'm glad to see so many people are posting about censorship -- which was my fist thought as well.

I am constantly censored on this site, to the point where I hate the fact that I keep on returning because I really want to boycott it. I do go to other sites more now for my news.

Goddamit, HuffPo, just let us all speak and you wouldn't have so many pissed off people.

[Jyoti Naik]

right on

[Malkin72]

Thank you.

They are ruining what would be the best site on the Web.

It's so random.

[IDIOTA]

Yep!

[lavici]

i was complaining that the situation in venezuela never got coverage in the huffpost even though i sent many posts with info and photos, and finally we got coverage: by the websites of the washingtonpost, nytimes and now cnn world - finally, but not at huffposyt. after reading some of these posts i do have to agree that we are subjected to a lot of censorship, even though it's not insulting. si i guess i was lucky today that the huffpost accepted my positive criticism. thanks... from caracas, venezuela.

[Matt Trainer]

Very well integrated into a person's social graph. Nice build guys.

[klondiker]

HA. Is this a joke? You claim to want better user interactivity and making sure that user comments "aren't lost in the mix". Yet, a comment that I posted here last night still hasn't shown up yet, or has been scrubbed. There was nothing offensive or inflammatory in it. I just made some suggestions on how the moderating system can be improved, so that comments are not randomly scrubbed because the moderator happens to disagree with what was said.

Why would I trust you with my personal facebook details, when I can't even trust you to stay impartial enough to post all comments?

[BN2112]

Well said! ("Pending"???)

[Jyoti Naik]

Absolutely correct

[Malkin72]

Exactly.

[IDIOTA]

Indeed!

[Chilblain]

No. Thank you. And let's be honest. This is just business.