Bolt, back to basics.

Bolt, back to basics. Well, really it's before basics. Let's go to basics shall we? When I signed up for bolt it actually had a black and orange type layout. But, when I returned to bolt.com it had a blue and orange layout. Sort of hip, sort of trendy. For people my age it was great. Top left hand corner there was the "join or sign in" link. Underneath that came the friends, notes (which is much like myspace messages), homepages, calendar, chat (my favorite), boards (where I often showcased my teen angst poetry), zap, cards, polls (which were always fun like the "if you could go back in time" poll), horoscopes, and the bolt store. There was always a featured member of the day, I was never sure how they were chosen, but, always someone new every day. Your homepage had links to the tagbooks, the question of the day (mine was question of the day once. It was my "what is your occupation" question. The choices were "legal" "smurf" "villain" "I'm a blue berry" and "isn't that when you can't go to the bathroom and stuff"). Eventually email came to offer voicemail. Clubs became more and more popular. (those are groups now) there was IM and radio by the year 2000. It was fast growing. The sex and dating chatroom was always the busiest chatroom, but, the real good stuff happened in the religion and spirituality chat. Rarely did we talk about religion and spirituality, and us "regs" as we called ourselves formed a strong bond. But, I'll leave the remniscing out. I loved that chat room. You could rate and review video games, movies, music, almost anything. You earned badges for different achievements. You could sign up for real free samples, I was one of the first people to try the thermasilk line, thanks to bolt.com. There were boards of poetry. Where people went to write and vent and to be judged. There was a place for depression and angst, helped me get through a lot of things. Also a place for sex, and I was kind of a "late" bloomer (i was 17) so, I did have a lot of questions BEFORE hand and felt ridiculous even trying to talk to my already experienced friends. Bolt had everything a teen and/or young adult could need. Boards about movies. There was a random board, which was highly entertaining. The creator of bolt was brilliant. So, it was before it's time. It was years before myspace became a social network. It was years ahead with it's IM feature included with a real network. A place to chat with out people asking if you want to view their cam. It was a place to meet people with similar interests. It was more than myspace or facebook are now. It was not just a VIDEO sharing site. That was just one feature that came out later on. Bolt gained major popularity through sponsoring American Idol. I KNOW it's something that all of us original members did not care for. It became idol obsessed. The quality of the interaction dramatically dropped. Bolt, back to basics. Bolt IS back. We need to work to get bolt "back to basics." I'm so grateful for the boltrestarter doing this, but, we need to work as much as we can, to make this site the bolt it was. Pre-Idol infiltration. Bolt, I've missed you. I hope one day that we can truly go back to basics. For now I will take you as you are.