My site folks at Hoop.la/Social Strata have rolled out yet another major update for us (that I think you will LOVE) focused on mentions or tags, as we're used to calling them on Facebook. Now, it's possible to tag and notify other members when you've mentioned them, or want to alert them to something, in a post. I am happy to say that I suggested this feature upgrade a while ago, and since it was one of the most voted-on suggestions in the Hoop.la development queue, it got implemented - and at no cost to me or you! Yay!
You can see this feature in use in my comment to Christine in our latest Practice Bakes Perfect challenge post (yes, #18 is now open, folks!), copied above.
To use mentions, simply type an @ symbol and then begin typing the displayed name of the person you wish to reference. You'll see a dropdown menu of potential matches on the name. Select the proper person, and a mention link will be auto-generated in pink! Once you make the post, that person will receive a special notification about the post.
Note that @mentions are only supported in posts and comments, not in subject lines. But there's one exception: they are not yet supported in chat room/event-type posts.
Please also note that YOU control whether you want to be notified about mentions in your notification preferences under your member profile. The default is set to email all members who are mentioned, but if you want to change this, you need to change this yourself. To do this, simply click on your avatar in the upper right of the site (be sure you are logged in first); then select "Notifications" from the dropdown menu that reveals. Scan down the page until you reach the "Influence Notifications" area, un-check the box labelled "When Someone Mentions You" if you do NOT want to be notified (see image below) , and save your changes. That's it!
Other New Features In This Release
LinkedIn: You will soon be able to integrate your LinkedIn account (if you have one) into your Cookie Connection member profile, meaning that you will be able to log into this site from LinkedIn. However, due to limitations on the LinkedIn end of things, you will not be able to feed content from LinkedIn into your Cookie Connection member profile, as you can already do with YouTube, Pinterest, and other social sites. I am currently working on enabling this feature, which can take days or weeks of jumping through hoops with LinkedIn, but I will be sure to let you know when it is available to you.
Usernames in Profile URLs: The site no longer uses number IDs in user profile URLs. Instead, it uses the user's actual displayed name (or as close an approximation as it can, since only certain types of characters are supported in URLs). Look at the very top of this screen shot of my profile to see what I mean:
Any past links to your profile on Cookie Connection will, of course, remain active, but now your name displays in the link, which is just another little form of free advertising! 
I hope you enjoy these new features. If you have any questions about any of them, please let me know in the comments below - and you might want to try out the new @ feature when doing so! 
