The New OCF Community
by Gabe Otte
On Feb. 1st, a new website will launch on
OCF.net. It will not only replace
the old, website with a fresh new one, but it will also provide a new online
community for Orthodox students across the United States and Canada. The website features will get stronger
and more diverse as it grows, but even at launch it will mark a change in the
Orthodox student community. Here
are some of the highlights:
FACEBOOK INTEGRATION
As many of you have heard, one of the key strengths of
OCF.net is its integration with the very popular Facebook. Essentially, when you go to www.ocf.net and click on “Join” to sign
up, you’ll be asked for your Facebook email and password. Then you’ll fill in a couple of things
for your ocf.net account and you’ll be off! Your new OCF.net account will be set up with the ability to
sync with your Facebook account.
Be sure to activate this in your account settings. Once you have enabled the Facebook
integration, it’ll allow you to have an OCF.net account that mirrors parts of
your Facebook account. For
example, if you were to set your OCF.net status to something, that same status
will get set over on Facebook! Of
course you’ll be able to control which parts come and go, but we hope that this
will allow you to think of OCF.net as an easy way to contact your Orthodox
friends like Facebook is for the rest of the world. As I’ve said, over time, OCF.net and Facebook will become
more and more integrated and pretty soon using the two will become as easy as
having one account in two places!
I hope you’ll come to think of OCF.net as a part of your life, just like
Facebook.
CATERED FOR ORTHODOX STUDENTS
While you’ll have many of the features that are available on
Facebook on OCF.net (such as Wall Posts, Messages, etc), you’ll also have
specific features created for the Orthodox Community at your fingertips. Each and every registered OCF chapter
across the country will have its own site where the officers will be able to
post information about the chapter and its upcoming events. Didn’t you ever wonder what your local
chapter is doing on a particular week?
With the new site, you’ll simply have to log in to OCF.net (by using
your facebook email and password) and click on your Chapter website for all the
latest News and Events. Wondering
what your friends are up to in their OCFs? Click on your friends to see just like on Facebook!
You’ll also be able to view various regional events that are
going on, as well as the national events.
For the people who are going on Real Break trips, after you create an
OCF.net account, let us know so we can add you to the list of
participants! It’ll be like an
OCF.net version of a group page!
You’ll be able to talk to your fellow RBers and get to know each other
before the trip.
WHATEVER YOU WANT IT TO BE
Finally, I want you all to know that OCF.net will be what
you guys make it. Facebook works
as well as it does because people participate in it religiously. If the chapters are not proactive about
updating their weekly events and if people do not use their OCF.net accounts,
the new website will be no greater than the last one. Not everything will be perfect at first. We are taking cautious steps to roll
things out in an orderly fashion so as not to break anything, but there will be
stumbling blocks. So if you have
problems with creating your account, or wondering how to work some of the
things on the website, please let us know and be patient with us. We will address all the problems that
arise and we will make this community as easy as possible. But know that you are the crucial
components in this bold step
forward. We are the next
generation of the church. Let’s
show the Orthodox world just how much more powerful we can be by uniting under
this new and amazing tool.
If you guys have any questions, please shoot Gabriel Otte a
message (friend me first) on OCF.net and let me know. You can also contact me at gabe@ocf.net. Thank you all so much for
joining this movement and helping me make this website amazing.
Posted
Feb 1, 2009 5:08 AM
by
admin
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