Ideas
Make it an actual 'network'
My main problem with this site is it calls itself furry network but it feels like a lifeless image board. There's no way in it to 'network' and communicate other than PMs and you'd already have to know the other person to really want to do that. The current purpose of the site feels like a place to go look at work of atrists you already know who don't like FA, and I think that should change. I think there should be more social networking features added, especially with the Feed style layout of the home page.
Things like status updates you can comment on in the feed, or comments/shouts on others pages you can comment on as almost all social sites have.
Groups and communities for discussion as well would help people connect and also help artists spread their work around like minded people and help the economy this site is working on bloom.
Currently every time I come here I think, "Wow this place looks cool" then I click around for a few seconds then realize "Wow, there's nothing to do-" except browse art of course, but that's more of an image board thing, not a 'network' think. This isn't 'Furry Imageboard' right?
Customer support service by UserEcho
I 100% with you here. I feel a sincere lack of actual networking opportunities as well. I think it would be great if this site could implement groups and perhaps chat rooms, like Deviantart, and more place to leave comments and shouts, like Facebook. That would turn FN into great place to meet new people and connect with your friends.
We currently have some ideas that we're going to work on implementing.
We'll be including a Discord server to chat. This will likely happen early next week. We're also going to have a shout-out style section for people's profiles; these will be optional and can be disabled by users. We're also looking into ways to add group support for the site.
All of these will take time, of course, and I imagine it'll be a process rather than one solid update. However, we hope we can get several of these implemented sooner rather than later.