Finding Friends

So, you’ve signed up for an account on LetterMo (or logged in for the first time since the new site went live) and filled out your profile, now what? The heart of LetterMo are the penpal connections you make, which allows you to share and view each other’s mailing addresses, as well as any profile information that you may have marked as “Friends Only.” The good news is that we have over 860 members on our site at last count, and at the rate new members are signing up, we will be close to 1,000 by the start of February this year!

Where is Everyone?

You might be asking right about now that if we have over 800 members on our site, why does it only show 100+ when you visit the members tab? The answer is that the member list defaults to “Last Active,” and only shows recently active members. When we migrated to the new site, everyone’s account was reset to having never logged in before. Until you log in to the new site, you won’t show up at all on the “Last Active” list. As we get closer to February, the number of active users is increasing daily, but it still is only showing a fraction of our membership.

The good news is that you can change the sort order of the membership list to “Alphabetical,” which will then show you all of our wonderful and fabulous letter writers! Look for the sort option on the right side of the membership page and change it from the drop down list. From there, you can view their profiles and initiate a friend request to start a new pen pal relationship.

Searching for the Perfect Pen Pal

It would take a long time to go through over 800 profiles, though you are welcome to try. To help you narrow down your possible new friends, you can also search the membership list. The search box at the top of the members list will let you search any of the details in the public profiles of our members. Note that it will only search the members available in the view you have selected, so be sure to change the member list to “Alphabetical” to search everyone.

A good place to begin is searching for members by country. Perhaps you are looking to find your first international pen pal, or maybe you are interested in finding a domestic pen pal so that you can enjoy speedier correspondence. Simply type in the country you are interested in and you will get a list of everyone who has listed that country in their profile. Or maybe you are interested in finding a pen pal who can speak a particular language–search for it and see everyone who has listed that language preference in their profile*!

Final Notes

Remember, after you request a friendship connection, an email is sent to that user for approval. Until they approve the request, you will be unable to see their mailing address. While many people respond quickly to emails from LetterMo, some people only check email occasionally, so responses may take some time. Simply keep looking for new friends in our membership list and you will have some exciting new pen pals before you know it.

Finally, the search function is only as good as the profile information that you provide. Be sure to check your profile and update it as needed to help others find you and to ensure that you have a great experience with LetterMo.

* The language field is brand new to everyone’s profile. Until members start to fill it in, your search for particular languages may not produce many results.

6 thoughts on “Finding Friends”

  1. Where did my friends go?

    If you previously participated in LetterMo, you may be wondering why your friends list is at zero. With the transition to the new site, we were unable to import the connections between participants.

    The good news is that we were able to transport all our previously registered members, and that if you use the alphabetical sort feature noted above, and refer to your previous friends list (see the New Year, New LetterMo! post to learn how to access the old site and its content) , you can reconnect with your pen pals.

    1. Despina, there are a few things you can do, such as starting with friends and family you already have. The second thing is to look at the members page on the website here and use the request friend button. Once the other person accepts the request, you will be able to see each other’s mailing address.

Leave a Comment

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.