Ellington

Even if you're just an occasional reader of the Jackson Free Press, you may have noticed that editor Donna Ladd is something of a "connector" in the parlance of the much-quoted book "The Tipping Point." Donna likes to get people together—people who don't always know that the others exist—in order to get them thinking, working and changing things.

Her drive to co-found, launch and see the Jackson Free Press succeed is certainly informed by her "connecting" nature. And the JFP has proven to be a formidable connector for many who want to see Jackson do well—and have fun in the process.

What you may not know is that Donna was connecting well before the JFP—in Jackson, it goes back to something called simply The Lounge.

When she started The Lounge, the idea was to get Jackson's creative, engaged, progressive adults together—usually at Hal & Mal's or a similar landmark watering hole in Jackson—to get to know one another, enjoy one another's company and, occasionally, hatch schemes.

One such scheme that had its roots in a Lounge was, of course, the JFP.

Once the JFP launched, the Lounge List became the e-mail blast for the JFP online, offering periodic updates on local events, bands playing out, occasional giveaways, contests and "best bets" to help you decide what to do with your evenings and weekends.

Perhaps somewhat less explicably—particularly when you didn't know the back story—the JFP in-print event listings were called the LoungeList for many years. (Those event listings now appear under the header "JFPevents.com" in order to encourage print readers to visit our comprehensive online calendar launched earlier this year.)

Which brings me to my point—the introduction of a new "iteration" of the LoungeList, which I'm calling "LoungeList 2.0." (I'm calling it that because I'm a nerd.) While the LoungeList e-mail blast continues (you can sign on at jacksonfreepress.com anytime), the LoungeList itself has become its own ".com" beast—a social network a la Facebook or MySpace—online at loungelist.com.

My desire to start a local social network comes from a few observations. First, I feel strongly that what's missing from many of the national social networks that people enjoy using is the local aspect—Facebook has a Jackson page, certainly, but the Facebook page for Jackson doesn't really represent an overlay of the Jackson social scene. It's nice, but it doesn't interact closely enough with reality.

Second, I like the idea of creating a venue in Jackson that helps promote the arts, artists, musicians and nightlife. Of course, that's one of the core ideas driving the Jackson Free Press and jacksonfreepress.com. And while the newspaper is great for community-building, we can't ignore the possibility that technology can help us extend our "connections" as well.

With the Jackson Free Press, we can list, highlight, write about, review and otherwise tout your event—you can submit the event, advertise it and read about it, along with 60,000 or so of your neighbors. Not a bad gig.

On the Web, we can go deeper and richer with a narrower band of that experience—you can post your own event and others can RSVP to it. You can build a network of friends (or fans or both) and invite them to your events. You can even create interest groups—already on LoungeList.com, after a few weeks of "beta" testing, we've got groups for jazz, local writers, gardeners ("dirt diggers") and Mac aficionados. (I started that one.)

LoungeList.com allows you to create and customize your own page—so just in case you don't already have a little corner of the Web to call your own, you're free to sign up and create www.loungelist.com/profile/yourname. The personal tools enable you to customize the page, add images, music, videos, invite friends and keep your own blog. You can even add custom HTML and all sorts of "widgets" to your page, including multimedia from other sites. And, there are special badges and other items that can be used to place some of your personal LoungeList.com content on other social networks such as MySpace.

You can also add to the community by creating interest groups (private or public) that include the ability to send e-mail blasts to other group members, online forums for discussions and the ability to customize the group page with RSS feeds (headlines from other Web sites).

The events calendar is one of my favorite parts. Here you can create a new event—private or public. If private, you can invite your friends to it and enable them to RSVP. (This works great for a backyard BBQ or a birthday celebration.) If it's a public event—like your band is playing out, you're giving a poetry reading or you're having a function for your organization, and you want people to know about it—then you can invite the entire social network to the event and watch the RSVPs pile up.

Of course, the multimedia is fun, too—upload videos you've created, photos you've taken and music that you've recorded. We particularly want to feature local artists and musicians, so create some galleries and let us know about them. Don't be shy about promoting your own thing.

During this "pre-launch" phase we'll be offering some prizes and incentives to get you started using the site, including ticket giveaways, gift certificates to area restaurants and some other fun stuff. And, we'll be inviting you to some more official "LoungeList" activities, including Lounges and parties where we can meet out—IRL—as well as online, and perhaps enjoy a tasty appetizer.

For now, please check out LoungeList.com, sign up and tell us what you think. We're still in "beta" phase, but we welcome your participation, feedback and early pioneering spirit. Someday soon we hope you'll credit LoungeList—and the JFP—for some key "connections" that helped make life in Jackson that much richer and more fulfilling.