A quick update about our awareness drive. In the week since we launched our awareness drive we have little more than 300 people fan us on Facebook, or join our LinkedIn group or follow us on Twitter. Our original goal was to reach 3,000 people through these three social websites. We are 10% of the way there.

If you have already supported our drive, then, thank you and please continue to spread the word to your friends, colleagues, and family members. If you have not yet joined our drive, you can do that with three easy clicks:

1. Become a fan of Jolkona Foundation on Facebook
2. Join our LinkedIn group
3. Follow us on Twitter

Finally, after 6 months of Beta testing and incorporating 100s of feedback we are excited to remove the Beta tag from Jolkona Foundation’s website. Please check out our newly updated website available at www.jolkona.org. As our closest friends and supporters, you are invited to try out the new site today.

We will start a concerted outreach program next week. But, we wanted to give you the ability to try out the new site before anyone else.

Here are some highlights from this release:

1. New branding and logo. One of the major feedbacks we received was that our logo does not clearly communicate our mission. We spent significant amount of time revamping our logo and the tagline. One of our co-founders, Adnan Mahmud, explains the new logo in more detail in an earlier post.
2. Anyone can create an account. We have removed the invitation code and now anyone can sign up for a Jolkona website account and give.
3. Deep integration with Facebook. We understand that you might not want to create another web account. If you are a Facebook user, you can sign into Jolkona website using your Facebook account.
4. Invite your contacts easily. You can easily import your contacts from your web email accounts (e.g. MSN, Gmail, Yahoo, etc.) and invite them to also join the Jolkona Family.
5. Share your Jolkona Experience with others. You can now find us on various social websites. We encourage you to become a Facebook fan, follow us on Twitter, and join our LinkedIn group.

We still have a long way to go, but we are now officially open for business.