Socialhams

Andreas OE8APR wrote me and some other bloggers some time ago with the request to write something about his social media project called socialhams. I did read some other blogposts which did actually not review the site but just linked to it. I don't want that and really want to express my opinion and thoughts about this website.

So I became a member and visited this "new" social media website a few times. Did post some things on it and took a look around. What I write about this website is my personal opinion and I hope I'm not too critical about it. I think Andreas has put a great amount of time and effort in it and I guess the site is still in state of development. These times it is not the only "social" site on the net and if you want to be succesfull you need to have apps, things and gadgets that no one else has. I'm not able to test the socialhams android app as I don't have a android device so I can't tell anything about it but I think that is one of the things other sites don't have yet. Socialhams is kind of a facebook but then only interesting for hamradio enthousiasts. Andreas is promoting this site not for nothing as he needs users to create interesting content and "social" contacts. The site has a lot of interesting
features and the most important are the modules called apps which you can switch on or off if you like. I tried the logbook and uploaded part of my logbook to see how it would behave. Actually it didn't behave too well. The site locked up when I try to view and try some things. I tried afterwards and could view some things but no really interesting statistics or so. You can rate QSOs, I really don't know why I should do that. You can view a map of your logged QSOs although I think my computer is too slow to manage that as the site did lock up again several times. I tried the DXcluster, it's just a telnet cluster with some filters not like the "graphical design" clusters you can find on the internet these days. The NCDXF beacon is a nice tool to check propagation. World clock is just a standard map not interactive. The Library is nice but mainly in the german language. The Elmer's corner has a few nice posts with info on how to use the DX cluster, APRS and the NCDXF apps. I can't tell about APRS, I don't know anything about it. Did try it about 10 years ago but don't have interest in it. Of course you can do a lot of other social things on the site and that is what it is ment for. You can make friends, you have a timeline like in facebook, you can make or take
part in groups. You can add blogposts, events, sites, polls, videos, files, photos, suggestions and you can take part in a referral program. Actually I think this site has a lot of potential, a lot or a bit too much? And here I am getting critical. I don't know if the hamradio community needs another "social" site? A lot of my hamradio friends are on facebook and I doubt they will move to socialhams actually or may be they would do it as a addition. A year ago CQfriends was very populair and in my eyes that was a different kind of social site, it was very different from facebook. It was more interactive with the radiohobby being the first social media of all.  And it was very populair as well, unfortenately it is not there anymore and I think many hams really miss it. I hope socialhams would fill the gap but in my opinion at the time it is much facebook like. Of course Andreas is still developing and if he doesn't get ideas and suggestions the site will not evolve. And now we come to the real reason why I wrote about socialhams. I want to have a chance to get that Baofeng GT-3 Mark II which is offered if you get some registrations through a referral link. Read all about that on the socialhams site.




So please if you're interested to take a look inside the socialhams site use this link to register. 

Tnx