Sitemodel

I give Sitemodel a rating of "meh" because it's brand new and the owner(s) of the site is clearly an amateur with running a network site.

The pros about Sitemodel run thin at the moment. It was created in hopes that people would join to recreate what Myspace.com had for several years before turning all profiles into 3.0... which is "user creativeness". Sitemodel allows [most] of the same layout coding that was allowed on Myspace. Who wouldn't want that old vibe we got back? I know I want it back, so I signed up to Sitemodel to check it out.

Overall the site began as a good experience. My first week there with two profiles; a role playing profile and a 'real-life' profile. During this first week there was a bulletin/journal posted from someone on my real-life account stating that the role players that kept signing up should leave Sitemodel all together. Since I am a role player, I felt a bit upset by this bulletin. However, the owner of Sitemodel posted a bulletin/journal as well stating that role players were welcomed to their site and that if other users didn't like it to simply not befriend them to their friend list. This was awesome, a social network similar to myspace was welcoming role players with open arms.

This awesomeness was soon ruined though. As more people discovered and signed up for Sitemodel - majority of them being role players - the site itself began to slow down. Obviously this was the server becoming "full" of its bandwidth.

But this wasn't the only problem fellow users noticed, Sitemodel began to censor. Most users who don't being censored as they feel their "freedom of speech" is being taken away from them, though most of us 'bit our tongues' and accepted the censorship. Then the censorship became ridiculous as words like "analyze" and "assumptions" (and etc), and abbreviations like "OMG" and "WTF" were being censored... looking like this "****yze", ***umptions", and "***". Even places like IMDb don't take their censorship that extreme.

The major cons of Sitemodel - at least for me - are the following:

- Extreme censorship; (see above)

- Lack of frequent updates; Don't get me wrong, the person(s) who runs Sitemodel does in fact post updates. However, they are not that often and when a decision has been changed the update for that change comes too late and not very descriptive. This leads to most users becoming confused and wanting quick answers.
There was an incident recently concerning role players becoming very confused about an update Sitemodel posted stating to "click LIKE for updates on Role Player" for their new Role Player facebook page. When I arrived on their Role Player facebook page it was filled with users confused, bitter, upset, concerned, and/or flat out angry because Sitemodel did not explain why this facebook was made. Speculations that the role players were being deleted from Sitemodel rose and this lead to users saying what was on their mind - both harsh comments and genuine concerned comments were posted. It wasn't until many hours later that the owner deleted all the user comments from Sitemodel's Role Player facebook page and posted that the speculations of role players being deleted from Sitemodel were indeed false. This could have been easily avoided if the owner had simply added a couple more sentences explaining what they were doing and why the Role Player facebook page was created in the first place.

- Unprofessional administration and moderators; As I stated in the first sentence of this long review, the person(s) who runs Sitemodel is clearly a beginner in running a social network similar to Myspace. The owner appears to ignore user comments when the user complains about something. This is a rookie mistake as most companies encourage complaints to better their product.
Now with that said, it is unknown to me if the owner just chooses to use a private message to the user who had complained. This is simply how it appears.

***

There is a minor con about Sitemodel dealing with religion displayed in the user menu bar. If you are highly offended by religion, then I don't suggest going to Sitemodel at all. For those who can turn face to it, then it is alright because it isn't exactly "shoved in your face" and you have the option to click what they have posted about their God.

At the moment, the owner of Sitemodel is creating two more social networks; one designed for role players and the other designed for real people. I have no comment on this at the moment as the sites are not up yet.

I hope this long review is helpful to those who take the time to read it. Thank you.