Menshn is a new social networking site, kind of like Twitter but on specific, allocated subjects.

It’s recently had prominence for 2 reasons – one of the creators of the site is UK Tory MP Louise Mensch and when initially launched they were transmitting user name and passwords in plain text (not good).

So, after a bit of a disastrous start, I thought I’d check out the site. Unfortunately, it wasn’t that easy.

You sign up by supplying an email address, password (just the once, so make sure you type it right!) and username. If you miss any registration details all the fields are blanked and it tells you that you need to check you filled in all fields – no specifics as to which one you missed. Hardly “user friendly”.

Once you have managed to get all the details right, you are then presented with a screen telling you that you should have received an email during the sign-up process to confirm your email address before you can sign in.

Woh, just done that. The wording seems one you’d see if trying to sign in before confirmation – I’d not done that, just simply signed up.

Anyway I got my confirmation email (to get the aforementioned screenshot I signed up for a 2nd time using a different email address – I never got the confirmation email for that) and after clicking it I got the same message screen. Trying to sign in gave me a 404 page which is was very odd. After trying the confirmation email a few times it eventually worked and it confirmed I was signed up. Great. Just to sign in now. Except it says my details aren’t valid – I’m guessing that single request for a password has got me and I mis-typed it. I filled in my email address to be sent a reminder of what it was. Except it never turned up. I tried again. 14 hours later and it still hadn’t turned up.

And that’s that. With no idea what my password is and no password reset emails turning up I’m stuffed. Unless they pull their finger out and make this basic, initial process a bit more friendly then they’re surely doomed to failure.