The new profile experience enables community members to get to know you. It presents a single experience that shows “WHO you are” and “WHAT you have done”, contextual to the audience (developers, IT professionals, designers) viewing your profile.

“WHO you are” includes your public identity (i.e. your display name) and other attributes like avatar image, company name, website link, and your biography. These remain the same on all your profiles.

“WHAT you have done” includes your activities and your recognition. This changes depending on the audience segment, showing a gauge of your participation within a community (i.e. your MSDN profile shows your activities on MSDN, whereas your TechNet profile shows your activities on TechNet).

Activities is a stream of your public actions in various community applications. Currently, these actions are recorded from Forums, Library Annotations, and Galleries and are surfaced in a single profile experience. A detailed list of the activities can be found here. Recognition is based on your public actions and how valuable other community members find your actions. It is surfaced on your profile in the form of points and medals. Currently, recognition can be earned only based on your actions within Forums.

I hope you'll like the new profile experience and find it useful to connect and get to know other community members and see what they are doing. But this is just the beginning. In the coming months, we will surface your actions from other Microsoft community applications into your profile. Also, we will add new ways for you to earn points and be recognized for "what you do" across a suite of community applications. I'll be using this blog to post additional details about our plans and would love to hear your feedback either via comments on the blog or at the MSDN, TechNet, and Expression Profile Feedback Forum.