Six Apart announced last night the launch of its newest social networking site, Vox (Vox announcement here). The company that owns LiveJournal, Moveable Type and Typepad has done a lot of things right with this new site. The benefits of having waited for consumer desire to mature before launching a social networking site are clear in Vox.
The service developed a reputation among some people during its beta period as a social network for artsy San Francisco elitists – but everyone needs a beta testing group and that’s a pretty good one to have. Vox was originally known as Comet and we first wrote about it here.
Besides all the basic features of a social networking site, Vox includes extensive privacy controls, a tag cloud for blog posts and a beautiful WYSWIG composition page. Privacy levels are a big part of the company’s strategy, Meena Trott in particular has been talking for some time about how the future of blogging will be found in small, closed groups communicating with each other online.
Profile pages can’t be edited directly at the code level, but there are a number of layout options and more than 165 sharp looking themes. There’s also easy mobile browsing and posting. Media elements can be placed into Vox pages with ease and the site integrates with YouTube, Flickr, Photobucket, iFilm and iStockphoto. Several of these are competing companies and it’s great that they are all available to users. IStockPhoto would have seemed like a strange choice to me had I not met the company yesterday and seen that their work is actually very community oriented and interesting.
One of the things that users are going to love about Vox is that the advertising is incredibly unobtrusive. The business model here looks really smart. There are large sidebar ads only on the admin pages, search results and a few others, it’s great. You can view profile pages and explore the site without looking at big ads! There are a few very small ads in public user pages and users are encouraged to post about their favorite books and movies. Those can be purchased by readers through affiliate links that Vox will monetize as well. I talked to Six Apart’s Anil Dash and he says the advertising is going to basically stay the way it is.
There are a few things I wish were different about Vox. The fact that clicking on a Flash media player takes you to a different Vox page with little else on it is very counter intuitive. If support for microformats was offered and done as well in Vox as other things are, that would be great. I’d also really like to see OpenID support and easy import/export of user data. Dash told me that they support OpenID as a server today (you can leave comments in LiveJournal as yourname.vox.com for example) and will be adding full client support for OpenID login soon. Dash said the company is working on a number of things to make export easier.
Overall, though, I think that Vox looks great at launch. It’s obvious that it was built by an experienced team who have been paid attention to how the market is developing and what people want in a social network. It’s uniquely easy on the eyes and I wouldn’t be surprised to see people flock to it. There are hordes of people dying to get out of MySpace and as general interest social networks go Vox looks like a very appealing alternative.
The site is looking good, but they will need to get the marketing right if they want to compete with the likes of MySpace. Alternatively they could go for smaller niches that value some of their features such as the added privacy.
A great deal of potential here. Looks like Web 2.0 got an upgrade. 2.5 maybe?
The thing that bugs me about Vox is that you can’t comment without having an account. Which is a great way to piss off visitors – or have no comments.
Yawn . . . Mike, wake me up when a web 2.0 site that is actually useful shows up.
Yeh that advertising scheme will last about a month after the site takes off.
It certainly is much easier on the eyes than MySpace.
Firefox users, get your Vox-ad-removing Greasemonkey user script here:
http://projects...x-blogs.user.js
Yeah i dont like that you have to have an account
Well while we’re hashing and rehashing sites that do a lot of the same things try
http://www.shoutcentral.com
Anything is better than myspace, I hope I see lots more vox type sites …
Yawn. Yet another general social network. And what’s up with the name?
I agree. The site looks good. However, how many different social networking sites do we need to have? Why can we spend the engineering power and dollars to come with something original? What is so original about this site?
VOX is a good platform to get more of the non-techies into blogging…The privacy control and ease of user are all good to see. Seems like a winner to me.
150 different themes? Looks more like 150 slightly varying headers, but alright, it looks good.
Let’s hope they pop up in searches and the like, coz I’m not going to go randomly voxing to find content. Leovillemight be interesting though.
Too bad you can’t make your own theme (like on myspace and lots of others) and you are stuck with just picking one of their “predefined” themes.
I think that what makes VOX a nice addition to blog provider websites is that the standard blog templates that you get from signing with Blogger hasn’t changed or has had not any added themes in a LONG time. I’ve had an account with Blogger for the last year and I can honestly say that I haven’t seen a new template added there since. This is one of the reasons why I switched to Wordpress.
My girlfriend came with me to a geek dinner in Portland earlier this week. She said she wanted to start blogging. The other women there recommended vox. That may be the difference, a service that appeals to women in its approach and look and feel. I’d say that’s pretty smart.
YASNS: yet another social networking site. People are excited why?
The future of blogging is in restricted access??? I don’t think so. Bloggers want to be heard. To find the good stuff you need a karma-like system for providing editorial ranking. Hiding it from people who aren’t explicitly interested in what you’re posting about doesn’t add value to blogging. For chatting with your friends maybe, but that’s not what I think of blogging as about. I guess that is how the teenagers use myspace though.
Social Networking the next ‘B2B’ ?
It is important for new social networks such as Vox to emerge and give an alternative choice to MySpace. As MySpace continues down the “We don’t need Web 2.0” (TechCrunch article September 12, 2006) road, there will be a need for alternative social networks that offer the technology and features that users desire.
Any startup that is looking to align them selves as direct competition to MySpace is running an uphill battle, but a company that is willing to partner with new technologies and offer the services that their users demand, will see success as the amount of users and companies feeling restricted by myspace begins to grow.
Eric: it’s amazing how technologists talk about what technologies and features users desire. Given MySpace’s continued success, it appears that MySpace is currently meeting the needs of its core audience. That doesn’t mean it won’t add things over time (it will and is) but I think it’s quite presumptuous to make assumptions about what technologies and features users want without any real-world evidence. One of the main reasons technology startups fail is that they make flawed assumptions about the desire/market for their product. Technology for technology’s sake is a killer. Part of MySpace’s success is its appeal to the mainstream. It may have a horrible UI and a fairly simple feature set but that’s part of the appeal. Most people don’t care about all the extras that us technology geeks fall in love with.
Alternative social networks are certainly necessary and they are popping up to try to capture users that aren’t interested in the MySpace environment. The problem is that the general market going after these users is quite saturated. Vox is rather uninspiring because it’s targeting this same general market and doesn’t really have a lot of substance and a well-defined target. I don’t see a whole lot in terms of interesting technology and features that would compel me to join or to leave an existing social network. Had this not been launched by Six Apart, I don’t think this would get much enthusiasm.
I’m quite impressed by what I saw. There certainly seems to be a lot of potential for this site to take off in much the same way as a certain social networking site has. Let’s hope they can continuously provide users with innovative and interesting features
“Any startup that is looking to align them selves as direct competition to MySpace is running an uphill battle…..”
Yeah, but Myspace is terrible. It won’t take much to get those people off there if a little bit of money’s involved. It just that none of these social websites make enough money to compensate their users with rewards. Myspace’s success simply came about because it’s name is simple and it’s perceived as cool by the general audience. Oh, and you can tried to get laid there, too.
If these people were logging on for something more, say direct incentives in the real world, then they’d flock like sheep to the next “cool” Internet venue.
You are right that I personally am not impressed by MySpace, but would you disagree that a large part of their growth can be attributed to the added value of complementary products (music, videos, pictures)? As of right now Vox might not offer any features that would persuade you to switch over, but if myspace adopts this we made web 2.0 mentality there certainly will be.
I have been using vox for many months and it is really a great way to interact with your friends and family. Nice way to share books, movies, photos and video with your best friends and your mom. I love it…
Biggest downside for me is lack of Safari support for OS X users in the Compose Page. It has been a persistant issue for some time now which still isn’t fixed. Suggesting Firefox on the Mac is a good idea but won’t be popular with the larger OS X audience, IMHO.
The other big problem with Vox is it’s run by the same people who allow the LiveJournal Abuse Team to abuse people. The ones who went back on written promises that LiveJournal wouldn’t have ads. And I’m supposed to trust them?
Vox populi…
I think the name is cool even edgy but a little too hip for it’s own good. Despite the templates that are available the general format just seems a little too well groomed or ‘vanilla.’ Thats why i dont think we’ll see a mass migration of Myspace users to Vox. It’s almost like comparing a strip mall to a Turkish bazaar–one is the epitome of orderly disply and conduct while the other is a cacaphony of spice merchants, rug dealers, snake charmers all competing for attention.
If Vox is hoping to attract/convert Myspace users it’s going to be an uphill battle given the time end effort invested by Myspace users into personalization and building a friends network.
And people think Pay-per-post is bad? Now we have TechCrunch writing press releases for Web 2.0 companies.
I agree with Vox’s contention that the future of blogging is for small groups — but this concept has already been implemented, and implemented well, in Multiply (http://multiply.com).
Multiply has been up and running for several years and has the ability for users to post photos, write blogs, share videos, etc. with the people they actually know. I don’t see what Vox has to offer that isn’t already being done by Multiply.
http://www.huff...-f_e_32543.html
take it as you will
Interesting article Eric. Shouldn’t really be a surprise. Social networks are here to stay and I think there’s still opportunity, especially in niche markets. But the idea that the major social networks like MySpace and Facebook will continue to command the same level of popularity and loyalty is questionable. A lot of people have also assumed that they can be monetized without limitation and this is foolish.
Social networks are not immune from the “laws” that govern all trends: the trend may persist long-term, but typically can’t perpetually maintain the same prominence and power it has in the beginning. The social networking market will come back to earth and it’s likely that within the next few years, we’ll see the emergence of the Next Big Thing that gets everybody excited and takes away some of the luster of social networking. Web 2.0 will be old news. Those with the opportunity to cash out should recognize the cyclical nature of all markets and give some thought to cashing out while the cycle is still in their favor. Some services, like Digg, probably aren’t long-term survivors unless they sell out, while others, like Facebook, can probably remain viable (but with less ridiculous valuations).
Social networks have now been commoditized and social networking features are being embedded within many existing websites and services. In a sense, social networking will be ubiquitous. Without some innovative features or business model, launches of products like Vox are boring. I’m excited to see startups that actually come up with something new, whether it’s on the technology side or the business side. For those of you that really like to think ahead, Ray Kurzweil’s argument that the personal computer will be a thing of the past in the relatively near future and that computing itself will be ubiquitous and embedded within all layers of our life (including our bodies) is fun to consider because, in retrospect, it would make all the hype about MySpace, Facebook, YouTube, Google, etc. look silly.
The public are bored of blogging, Livejournal did that well enough and now the fad has died. Most bloggers now are interested in it enough to use their own system and webspace.
So MySpace + blogging + WOW A TAG CLOUD!!!!! isn’t going to take off.
Well done Vox team, you wasted your time and I can’t believe it has taken you so many months to come up with such a generic bunch of tools.
I’ve had enough, I’m inventing Web3.0