SharePoint 2013 - Introduction to My Sites

My Site is a personal site for an individual user in an organization. Using My Sites users can create their own profile and take advantage of the various social networking features provide by SharePoint such as Sharing contents, micro blogging, following users, etc. The following is an example of SharePoint 2013 My Site.

You will notice that the top navigation bar of every page displays tabs for the following links
i) Newsfeed
ii) OneDrive (Formerly known as Sky Drive)
iii) Sites

Also, The default links on the left navigation bar that are visible to the owner of the My Site are as follows:
i) Newsfeed
ii) About me
ii) Blog
iv) Apps
v) Tasks

Now, let's have a quick look at each of the above mentioned links. We will discuss each one these links further in detail in the upcoming posts.

1) Newsfeed 
Newsfeed is the user’s social hub where he or she can see updates from the people, documents, sites, and tags that the user is following. Newsfeed is the default page that displays when a user accesses his or her My Site. This page displays the feed of recent activities related to a user's specified colleagues and interests. Users can customize their newsfeeds by adding or removing colleagues they are interested in, specifying interests, and configuring the kind of activities they want to follow, such as when a colleague tags a shared interest.

2) OneDrive 
The OneDrive tab links to the user’s OneDrive for Business. OneDrive for Business is the user’s personal file storage and synchronization service for business use.

3) Sites
The Sites tab lists the sites that the user is following and suggested sites that the user might find interesting. The user can use this to easily keep track of the sites he or she is most interested in.

4) About me
The About me is the default page that displays when a user accesses another user’s My Site. This page displays the user’s profile page to other people in the organization. The About me is also the default page that displays when a user accesses another user's My Site by clicking the user's name or profile picture.

5) Blog
Blog is a Web Part page that the My Site owner can use to publish a blog. By default, the Blog page displays a left navigation pane with links to the user's blog categories and archives that can be edited.
The user can also customize the Blog page by editing the page, by adding apps to the page, or by changing the look of the page.

6) Apps
Displays the lists, libraries, and other apps for the user.

7) Tasks
Displays tasks assigned to the user. This is only visible to the owner of the My Site page.
The tasks can be viewed based on importance, status (active), whether they are completed, recently added, or personal.

Hope this post was helpful! In the next post we will discuss about the various steps required for setting up and configuring My Sites in SharePoint 2013.