We already know Self-Storage Talk thrives as the industry's leading online discussion forum. It's a place to ask questions, provide answers, share resources and information, post your opinions, and even vent about your frustrations.

The format is very simple. Each discussion begins with a single post, and as posts (or "responses") are added to this initial post, a discussion thread results. Any registered member can start threads or respond to them. The initial post sits at the top of page one of the thread, and responses from oldest to most recent continue add to each other at the bottom of the page. This traditional-forum method of posts and responses continues to be the primary platform for the website, but theres an entirely different section of the site thats growing in popularity: the social networking component.

Similar to the Facebook model, SST members can become "friends," meaning they have given each other access to their social profiles and information. It also means theyre announcing their friendship to the rest of the community, as friend lists are visible to other members. Friends can write public messages to each other on the visitor walls. In addition to friendships, members can join together in social groups, a way for members with common interestsfor example, music to join together and have discussions that are still public but don't appear in the primary forum. Additionally, social groups allow for posting photos, just as the rest of the forum does.

Admittedly, even the community manager (yours truly) has been slow to wade into SST's social networking aspects. I'm learning more every day about all of SST's features, many of which are still untapped. But with nearly 3,700 members, the potential for the friending and social groups to explode in popularity and to enhance the user experience is there, which means we must take advantage of it.

Therefore, I have a simple request for you this week: friend me. Go to the User CP after you've logged into your account (located in the horizontal nav bar), click on Contacts & Friends and under "Add a Member to Your List ", type jcarlisle and hit "Add Friend." If you're a member, I'll be accepting your friend request, period, point blank, no questions asked. I would love to be your first SST "friend."

While you're in there, you might want to friend other SST members, which you can do the same way you friended me. Once you've done that, I encourage you to go to Social Groups and consider joining one of the existing groups or starting a new one. Feel free to poke around and experiment with the groups.

I have a feeling social networking on SST is going to take the site to the next level. But if you're not a registered member yet, you can't get it on all the fun. If that's the case, what are you waiting for? Create an account here. It's free, easy and takes only a few minutes. See you on SST.