Here’s how to get started with – and get the most out of – Lijit:

1. Get invited to join by someone who’s already Lijit. Alternatively, visit the Lijit homepage to learn about other ways to join the Lijit beta. Why is joining so complicated, you ask? By either getting invited or getting hooked up with an existing user through our alternate methods, we ensure that you start your Lijit experience with at least one person in your trusted network. It’s a social service. Having a network is key!
2. Once you’ve gotten invited and have created your Lijit account, install the Lijit add-on for Mozilla Firefox or Microsoft Internet Explorer, or the bookmarklets for Safari/other, to enable the Lijit toolbar and sidebar within your browser. This will allow you to enter and view reports about the web sites and pages you and your network of friends and trusted sources find to be good, bad, or dangerous.
3. Invite some friends to join your network. Lijit gets better and better as your trusted network gets bigger and bigger. The more, the merrier – so start sending those invitations! You can also include RSS, ATOM and OPML feeds in your network (e.g. from del.icio.us, Flickr, Digg, etc.). They may not be people, but they can still contribute interesting information.
4. Experience how much better search engines can be when you’re Lijit. Visit Google and Yahoo! and perform some searches. See the Lijit search mark-up reports that display? That’s your network of friends and trusted information sources indicating whether or not those search results are relevant to you and helping guide you towards the information that matters (and avoid the information that doesn’t).
5. Get to know what the people in your trusted network find interesting by visiting their profile pages. (Just click on any informer picture anywhere to reach their profile page.) It’s a great way to discover new things.