2 posts tagged “livejournal”
I've been on Vox for about two weeks now and have a better idea of whether it's worth my while.
Things I like about Vox:
- I like it that adding somebody into my neighbourhood is quite distinct from friending somebody. In LiveJournal, the only way of following an interesting journal is to friend them - and even if it's only semantics, "friend" is such a loaded word. It's good that Vox separates following another blog from friending.
- It's possible to adjust the settings so that the neighbourhood doesn't show on the main page of the blog. Something I hate about so many of the social sites is that the list of friends/neighbours all showed as if it were a popularity contest.
- The AJAX powered interface works pretty well
- There is something interesting about QOTD. At first I rebelled at
the idea as a glorified meme, but they're usually short and not too
taxing to participate in
Things I'm not so sure about:
- Although generally the interface is nice, sometimes it seems a little confusing. For example, what is the real difference between "Neighborhood" on the top menu (when logged in) and "Connect" on the second menu? What is the point of Collections? I've yet to see Collections used in any really helpful way.
- A non-US nitpick: there are actually books and CDs (like those published particularly for the Australian market) which exist and aren't available in Amazon.com. I wish there were an easier and better way of linking to these
- Is there really a need for it? Yes, Vox may have nifty web 2.0 features (those who know me well know that I can never mention 2.0 without a degree of irony), but is there really a need for it when people have invested their writing and thoughts in LiveJournal, MySpace, not mention conventional blogs like TypePad, WordPress, blogger. Is it worth my while investing my time and thoughts in Vox if it never really takes off in this crowded market? There is nothing sadder than spending time in a social site which has seen better days - anybody remember orkut and tribe.net?
- As I've said before, if Vox is to be taken at all seriously as a
way of blogging - it needs to allow commenting by non-Vox members and
ways of dealing with comment spam
- Other than QOTD and tags, there are no community features in Vox. I think that this is a mistake
It's also fun being in a new thing, when everybody is still discovering and making new connections. Later on things tend to ossify. But that's not happening yet and it's enjoyable to participate. Are these the halcyon days?
I found this information via Google blog search. It contains Anil Dash of Six Apart speaking quite candidly about Vox and how it fits in with LiveJournal (many LiveJournal users are feeling very neglected right now) and TypePad.
If anybody's really interested in this topic, I suggest that they read the entire thread, and not form too many opinions from my excerpts. There is always a risk that excerpting and summarizing can take words out of context and distort. I've tried not to do that. I decided that it was still worth doing, because I found his comments very interesting and they were rather buried in a long thread. I wanted to make this information more available.
Finally, I must repeat his disclaimer that these are just his opinions, not Six Apart's.
Caveats taken care of, this is some of what he said:
Now, the question I must ask myself - if Vox is aimed at an older and less techie and more mainstream type of crowd, am I going to decide that I don't want to like it any more? Does a part of me want to rebel from being pigeon-holed in such terms? I think that for the time being, I'm going to pretend that I didn't read those final few paragraphs. I'll continue evaluating Vox on its face value. If I am honest with myself, I will admit that I'm not the most techie guy in the world. After all, my main blog is on TypePad, not WordPress or MovableType. I will dabble with technology to advance the primary goal which is writing and other content, but I don't enjoy dabbling more than I need to.Vox will be free and ad-supported.
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To be honest, we're deliberately not talking a whole bunch about Vox's business model and even the features because it's still *really* early. We're going to let the community tell us how things should work and when certain parts are done. Basically, it's a case of not wanting to promote somethat that most people can't even see, let alone make use of. If we were talking a lot about it, I'm sure we'd get grief for being a bunch of Web 2.0 hypesters, and that'd be a fair criticism, too. So we chose to get grief for being too closed, and that's a fair point.
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Truth is, Vox will never have all the stuff LJ has, probably. Like, LJ has Singles and a To-Do list and god only knows what else. I sure *hope* Vox never has all the features TypePad has. ("I need to customize my feed URLs!") But we will be sharing the best, most useful parts between all three platforms, and Vox is already starting to have its own distinct community.
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Truth be told, I think a lot people took the statement of *fact* that LiveJournal is a predominantly young community as something other than what it was. LJ, to me, is more about people who want a community and are very comfortable with the fact that they're not "mainstream". (Whatever that means.) Hell, most of us on LJ are proud of that fact.
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Vox is more for people who don't really care about technology, but want to connect with friends and family. My gut tells me that skews older and less techie and probably more mainstream. Is there some overlap? Sure. Does that mean OH NOES EVERYONE PANIC!!!1!
I don't think so. :)
