Last week social software company SixApart launched Vox, its newest social networking and blogging service. The launch was high profile, the site is beautiful and many people (myself included) thought Vox was bringing something important to market. Not everyone agreed.
In the following QandA I queried Andrew Anker, Executive VP of Corporate Development at SixApart, about some of the biggest criticisms of Vox at launch. Prior to working at SixApart, Anker was co-founder and CEO of Wired Digital and a general partner at August Capital. I think these questions and answers will be of general interest to startups and social social software practitioners in general.
Anker told me that he thinks the social networking market is far from saturated and that there is a market in protecting privacy even if people don’t use it. He says that software can be both feature rich and accessible to non-technical users; that the world of online advertising is just beginning to move beyond “punch the monkey” style ads and has lots more room to develop as well.
The following are Anker’s replies, I’ll let you judge for yourself whether they are convincing. Graphics below are from a few of the site’s more than 150 layout templates.
Marshall:
Some people have wondered whether Vox is Just Another Social Network – how close to saturated is the social networking market?
Andrew:
We don’t think it’s anywhere near close to saturated, which I think is mostly evidenced by the fact that all of the current services are growing quite nicely. We’re far away from the zero sum market share stage of social media where one company’s new customer is someone else’s loss. To make an analogy, we believe we’re in a similar stage as cable television was in the mid 1980’s. There have been a few breakout hits like MySpace and Facebook, but we’re a long way away from having a diverse set of properties covering all of the different market segments and customer use cases.
More importantly to Vox, we believe there is very little out there that is adequate serving the older, non “hooking-up” market. MySpace is great, but it’s not the best place to share pictures of your children with the friends and family you are closest to.
Marshall:
What evidence is there of strong demand for privacy-centric tools for personal expression?
Andrew:
The easiest example we have is our own Live Journal, which has 11 million registered users, but Flickr’s amazing growth in what was already a crowded photo sharing space has also done a great job of proving the need for privacy tools. And to be specific, we believe that more important than privacy itself is control… giving users the ability to decide who can see what. The fact is, the majority of posts and photos on Vox (like on Live Journal) are not private. But our customers need to know that they can make something private if appropriate. Create first, decide who can see if after.
The privacy issues that Facebook had a few months back were all about control. As has been much written about – see danah boyd for example. Facebook didn’t expose any new data when they made those changes. But they gave users less sense that they controlled their own data, which was the root cause of the user protests.
One of the founding principles of the Web 2.0 idea (per Tim O’Reilly) is that users control their own data. As far as we’re concerned, that applies both to the ability to move their data from service to service as well as the ability to be able to decide who can view it.
Marshall:
Why do readers have to be logged in to Vox to post comments?
Andrew:
That’s a temporary limitation that will be fixed over time. We are still in rapid iteration mode in developing the site and that was just one of those features that we didn’t get to before launch. In order to open comments to everyone, we need better spam moderation tools than we have currently. As soon as we have those in place, we will open the site to public comments. To be clear, much in the same way that Voxers can control within Vox who can comment (anyone, friends, family), this
will also be a user settable thing.
Marshall:
How has the Vox team strategized around offering something both feature rich and accessible to non-geeks? What could the future look like in regards to these issues?
Andrew:
Building good usability is about doing thousands of small things right and balancing out feature rich with accessible to non-geeks is part of that process. Very early on in Vox’s development, we created a two week rapid iteration cycle where we made sure to push code religiously every two weeks. By doing that, we made sure that we were building a design cycle that was always two weeks away from fixing any problem.
We have Hitbox instrumented all over the site, an internal usability lab, a great support team reading all site feedback and a passionate group of developers who are also big Vox users. We are constantly
listening to both the implicit and explicit data we’re seeing on the usability side and constantly tweaking the site to make it friendlier.
Marshall:
The advertising on Vox is remarkably subdued and that’s great for users. Some people felt burnt, though, when LiveJournal recently introduced sponsored communities and features. Do ads on admin pages, modest public facing ads and affiliate revenues from partner sites have the potential to convert sufficiently or will Vox crumble and add flashing banners after a few months?
Andrew:
We’re certainly working hard to balance the needs of Vox users with advertisers and don’t believe that the audience we’re going after responds well to flashing banners and “punch the monkey” type messaging. Obviously we’re a business and need to make money. But we don’t see making money and doing advertising right as two mutually exclusive concepts.
As was announced last week, we’re working closely with our advertising partners to make sure we do it right. As early as social media is, we believe advertising on social media is even earlier. We are very confident that we can help it develop as one of the most effective media out there.
I think his cable TV analogy is flawed since, by definition, social networking is all about socializing, and there’s only so many networks you can belong to. Join too many, and you won’t be able to keep up. You won’t know what’s going on, and interactions will be shallow. Users will tend to aggregate at the hubs (the MySpaces and Facebooks) because there are potent network effects that come into play.
Whereas the hundreds of cable channels, each serving diverse niches, can survive quite well because viewers are passive (staring at the screen, not interacting). There’s no great commitment that’s needed. That, plus the lack of a la carte cable TV packages.
I’ve always supported a service called MindSay, they’ve really done a great job at building a community around blogs. I like what Six Apart is trying to do, and I will check it out as it evolves for sure!
There is very little in vox that isn’t in the many other sites. What makes you guys better again?
I totally agree with the need for customized, granular privacy controls. Everything seems to be pointing in this direction. This is actually a topic that we just discussed on our blog in regards to anticipated Web 3.0 trends.
@Alchemist – I don’t think he’s comparing cable and social media as industries, but rather claiming that social media is very early in its evolution, much like cable was in the mid-80s. Not sure if you remember, but few people had cable then and things like CNN were oddities… the present day cable landscape, even from a video perspective, was not something most people imagined except perhaps in the broadest terms.
The analogy to cable is better viewed from the perspective of a constantly splintering audience. Cable shows are continually narrowing their focus to specific categories and niche audiences. Think of the trends in the past five years.
Home improvement shows
Crafting shows
Motorhead shows
Cooking shows
personal fitness shows
etc.
Social networking is not just about “hooking up” but from a sociological perpective, about group behavior and shared values or interests.
I think social networks will become even more narrowly focused on the internet simply because it is possible to offer so many options.
Areas of growth (in my opinion) will be in the following
Social “hook up” networks based on religion, proximity/region, income levels, shared background experiences, musical tastes (think Hip Hop vs. Heavy metal), etc.
Social networks will also splinter into shared values on fitness, political beliefs, careers, and especially hobbies like crafting and favorite films, etc.
It won’t just be the audience driving this either, website owners will identify the value of aggregating highly focused social networks and will create online environments catering to niche members in an effort to capture highly targeted markets for advertisers.
Integrated media platforms where members can post clips such as audio or video podcasts for other members are going to be immensely popular as well.
all this social site crap is the bullitin boards we had in the early 90s before the web…they come and go… AOL btw was the champion of that time in our internet history; and mySpace seems to be the current champion today.
you can tell though they don’t know what there doing; when asked about posting comments and having to be logged in…he replied they are fixing it…thing is…that is a total design flaw and it was designed that way…meaning…they don’t know shit about their market, or the people; come on, its not like we don’t know sql bro….shit, dis be san fran here.
i don’t know…i’m really just complacent about all this crap…how many social sites can you really join and maintain interest in? even the teenagers are getting sick of it; they’re leaving mySpace.
here some advise…community has to be built…your whole privacy policy was a total waste of stupid geek thinking…you even admitted it; that most people just post stuff publicly…yeah….cause the average person just wants to communicate…and don’t really want to be administrators…and know their shit ain’t that much interesting.
anyway…good luck.
I fully agree with Erik’s assessment. It’s just another example of the long tail in action. As social networking matures, the tail will continue to grow and in aggregate begin to compete with the MySpace and Bebos of the world.
I see this expansion into social cliques as a more accurate reflection of how people organize themselves now – into groups that reflect their interests and passions. Personally, I’m into architecture and homes, so my wife and I created a site around this (currently in private beta):
http://www.HomeAndTell.com
The cable guys and other traditional media are facing a new world where content is not limited to what makes economic sense but whatever people want to create (for whatever reason). They can either embrace this fact or like Metallica, watch their audience fade away.
ultimately, it’s not the analysis or the criticism that matters, it’s whether people use the service or not.
personally speaking, i think Vox is beautiful to read, fun to use, and a great blogging platform. nice hooks to Flickr, YouTube, Amazon, and other sites with tagged media to reference / pull in. good social networking, and great discovery of blogs/comments from your friends. all in all, really sweet product.
i’m using it for a side blog on hopes & dreams called http://OneThousandOne.vox.com/
- dave mcclure
i love the fact that people involved in social networking sites now think they are social anthropologists for the www era.
it’s an interactive web site with some pretty pictures.
keep it in perspective, please.
First Impression:
Upon arriving to http://www.vox.com, the first page that loads, asks me to Join Vox.com for reasons. X, Y, & Z. Reasons X,Y, and Z are next to irrelevant for my reasons to join yet another social network or switch. I can’t help but think that this first page is really cheezy. So I decide to hit explore Vox instead, considering that most web 2.0 startups load up with such a page, so its not without reason.
Exploring Vox.com
The following page that loads reminds me very much of a blog website. The only exception is that multiple users and their posts appear. Their postings have no relevance to me being here aside for the fact that its says the Vox.com actually has REAL users! At least that much I believe now.
Vox’s search bar
So finally, I get to the search bar. I can search for virtually anything I want categorized into posts, photos, audio, video, books, people. Oh this will be fun. I type in the first thing that comes to mind “porn.” Looks like this site is well censored, which just takes the fun out of it. So here’s the breakdown by part.
Why search posts when I can get better results from Technorati, or Google
Why search photos when I can use flickr?
Why search audio.. uh period?
Video.. who doesn’t use YouTube?
books.. I get better advice from Amazon.com.
People.. if my friend was on here, he would have asked me to join.
So exploring Vox.com was next to useless aside from showing me that REAL people are using Vox, which is great.. better than no one.
Read the full Strategic Assessment of Vox.com at the Next Intuit Blog
http://www.nextintuit.com
I fail to see what the big deal about only logged in users being able to comment. Look at Facebook, Myspace or any other social site in this sphere. You have to register and login to be able to interact with these site. Why is Vox being chastised for this practice? If anything it gives people an incentive to join the site in the first place.
While it isn’t perfect (what blog/community platform is?) Vox has the best hit-the-ground-running interface I’ve seen. Overly simple? Sure, but it’s supposed to be, that’s the whole point!
Comment #11 = flame-bait. Seriously, an alleged industry watcher that doesn’t (or pretends not to) know who Ben and Mena are? Gimme a break. Joking or not, in my world, he effectively rendered everything he said (or ever will say) completely useless. If you want to write satirical humor, you shouldn’t do it under the guise of a legitimate review.
“Why search photos when I can use flickr?
Why search audio.. uh period?
Video.. who doesn’t use YouTube?
books.. I get better advice from Amazon.com.”
Sounds like it’s a great thing all those services are integrated into Vox.
Okay after reading all the above comments I have to say the following:
It looks insanely great! I don’t mean the integration with flickr and YouTube, I mean the site actually is easy on the eyes! I dunno maybe I’ve been using a Mac too long but there is something very nice about great design. As far as comments and being logged in; if you haven’t noticed the onslaught of spam in blog posts you soon will!
Great job Voxers and hats off to you!
1. Vox design looks really good. One thing that bugs me about MySpace is how icky the pages look, and in order to get them to look nice is a hack. Vox gives ownership of the pages to the users too, which is something I think people will appreciate.
2. Long tail… at what point to the sites that encourage the long tail become long tail themselves? Will we someday see a site that makes a community out of all the sites that have niche content?
The easiest example we have is our own Live Journal, which has 11 million registered users
Actually, that is kind of an inflated number. LJ has had 11 million *accounts* created on the service, many of which are communities or throw away accounts or inactive. People interested in the statistics of LJ participation should look at their stats page:
http://www.live...l.com/stats.bml
Which labels around 1.8 million accounts as active, and many users have multiple accounts.
It’s funny — Anker’s responses to these questions look remarkably like an interview one of the founders of Multiply gave, oh, about a year ago.
I agree with his idea that there are different markets out there. I am too old and married to get anything out of MySpace or Facebook. But Multiply has created a secure site where I can upload photos of my kid and share stuff about my life with people I actually know. It rocks.
And Anker saying that soon people won’t have to log in to make comments totally turns me off. If the idea is to make the social network more meaningful, why would anonymous posting be allowed? I don’t want some random person anonymously commenting on content that is personal to me. It makes no sense at all.