New Series: How to Make the Most of InterNations

Since the number of our international member base is growing rapidly (we hit the 180.000 members mark on July 1st) and more expats might become aware of our community due to our presence on Facebook and Twitter, we thought that it is high time for a weekly guided tour that helps you to make the most of our site. This series of blog posts will follow the fictional U.S. American expat Margaret Edmondson who recently moved from Seattle, Washington State, to Munich and wants to enjoy expat life in Germany with the help of InterNations.

If you are interested in joining InterNations, there are two ways of becoming a member of our network. The easiest way of getting connected is receiving an invitation from a friend. If you find a mail in your inbox that says “[Your friend] has invited you to InterNations”, you simply need to click on the confirmation link in the message to begin the sign-up process. You don’t know anyone who is already a member of InterNations? There is still a chance for you to become part of our international expat plaform. If you go to our membership application form, you can tell us your reasons for wanting to become an InterNations member and contact our support team for an automatized invitation.

However, as we are a community of trust and confidence, we are reviewing every single application and reserve the right to reject some. In order to maintain our strong expat focus, so-called “two flag” members — those who live in a country other than their own country of origin — always have a higher priority status than global minds with an international background who are currently not living abroad. We are very happy, though, to welcome so many new expatriates via the membership application form every day. If your application is accepted, we will send you an e-mail invite quite similar to the one described above. Just click on the sign-up link and start with your registration in our community!

After receiving her invitation from the InterNations Team, Margaret has clicked on the confirmation link and was referred to the first step of the sign-up process. (Don’t worry. There are only two steps to complete this process.) Here she has to share her full name, gender, birthday, contact e-mail and select an InterNations Home Community, i.e. the city where she is living at the moment and where she would like to participate in the expat community. As we would like to uphold our status as a trustworthy community, we do not welcome nicknames, duplicate profiles or other ways of obfuscating your identity. But that’s no problem for Margaret, who has a genuine interest in expat networking, making new friends and establishing business contacts via our site.

In the second step of the registration process, Margaret fills in her country and city of origin as well as her current country and city of residence. She also has to choose a radio button according to her current employment status (working / not working). As a self-employed writer, Margaret prefers to have these two facts in her profile (they will be listed under “company” and “position”).

But she doesn’t feel quite comfortable with posting her new address online, even though the little lock-shaped icons indicate that this information will be hidden from the public. Instead, she reads the InterNations Privacy Policy first and then presses the “Finish” button on the bottom of the page. Welcome to InterNations, Margaret!

Next week, the second installment of “How to Make the Most of InterNations” will explain which first steps a new InterNations member might want to take on the site.