Well, not in the “I’m gonna fill in about 500 forms and then hope that the computer in the other end has a match for me” kind of way. We give you more freedom than that. It more a matter of sharing your photos and conveying a sense of who you are to the world.

But is that something new? No, 23 has let you do that for more than a year by now (and thank you for the flowers, you guys, you shouldn’t have!). We have just added a new feature, About, which let’s you describe yourself in your own words and with your own photos. On to that we add some information about your friends and your community on 23.

To get started finding that special someone, or just let other 23 users know who you are, go to your 23 account and click the About tab. You’re welcome.

As you may well have noticed 23 has been undergoing quite a few changes over the past few weeks. Thomas will be back to tell you about the major ones at a later time, but a few announcement are in order now.

First of all, 23 users should be feeling some nice improvements in the performance of the site. We doubled our server capacity this week, and Guan and I have spent the day fine-tuning the database queries and other techy/nerdy stuff on the site. For example, the load time of the overview of my photos has been cut by 60-70%.

The major addition in the version we’ve just put online is in the way 23 is styled. Previously, the site’s grid was done with HTML tables. Now, it’s done with clean CSS. For the average user, this doesn’t change anything, but for the people who style their accounts this adds flexibility. Most importantly, the new styling allows designers to effectively change the width of their site. I’m demonstrating this on my account at the moment.

23 user valdemar has uploaded an album of recent photos from Iran. Interesting to see the real world of a country so discussed on superficial levels in politics all the time.