Digg competitor Mixx just launched an extension to its groups feature that founder Chris McGill describes as “Ning for social media”.
Users can now set up Mixx community sites on their own subdomains (see ours here). Administrators have the power to brand them visually, post editorial content, and even make some revenue off advertisements. Others can join as members and begin submitting items as they would regularly on Mixx. All submissions (stories, images, and videos) can be made just to a particular community, or to the Mixx site as a whole as well.
This release is more akin to Reddit’s hosted “create a Reddit” service than it is to Reddit’s new open source offering since Mixx communities are hosted and can only be rebranded to a limited extent (with custom logos and color schemes).
Just as the standard Mixx experience is divided into verticals like Entertainment, Science and Sports, communities can deploy their own tabs for niche topics. The TechCrunch community, for example, has been seeded with tabs for “Obtaining Funding”, “Creating the Dream Team”, and “Revenue Models”. To keep each of these categories alive - and therefore your community members engaged - admins can set tags that will automatically import relevant items from the main Mixx sharing stream (”google”, “arrington”, “techcrunch”, “twitter”, “yahoo” have been set as tags in our case).
Communities also come equipped with a message board and a “member lounge” that provides community overview information such as activity stats, member lists, and awards for top submitters.
Social media fanatics will enjoy this new ability to carve out their own alcoves in Mixx. I’d really like to see Mixx take the next step and allow for a completely rebranded experience so that web publishers the net over can incorporate user contributed content seamlessly into their sites. This would entail proper domain masking and thorough CSS and HTML customization, as you’d find on KickApps. Then Mixx could really claim to compete with the likes of Ning and the other social networking platforms.
Digg has 100 times the traffic of Mixx.
@rokhayakebe
They sure do. Maybe 200 times.
BUT, Digg stopped innovating about 1.5 years ago. That will catch up with them. Maybe not Mixx, but someone. I for one stopped using them. Took them too long to fix comments and the immature conversations are just too much.
I’m intrigued by this Mixx offering. Its unique in its level of customizability. I just checked out a Commnity called the Fringe and its pretty cool. Mixx’s design lends itself well to this type of skinning and enhancement.
Hmmm, I am not sure if this will work. Why would someone want to put his content, time and effort into Mixx’s subdomain?
The open source code from reddit is a much better idea if you want to create a community social bookmarking place for your site or brand.
Not really sure why every feature update gets a TC post. I think Mixx is doing a lot of things well, but seems to get unneccessarily high amount of coverage here. Kudos to them though.
Cool dev. every body is now set to become a community administrator and make some money in the process too.
Rajeev Vashisht
http://tekno-world.blogspot.com
With Mixx it is almost impossible to reciprocate a friendship, or work out who from all the people who have friended you, you still have to friend back.
You actually have to click through to a profile to see if you have friended them before.
I have only friended 45 of my 160+ fans on Mixx becuase I expected this problem to be fixed months ago.
Link above goes to my profile on Mixx, almost inactive because of the interface issues.
Hmm seems intreasting,
http://www.seoignition.com
http://www.seoaziz.com
I think Mixx is doing things well,Soon I’m going to try them out..
http://www.crunchnow.com
Guys, you should work a little on the logo. It is not well embedded.
Anyway - this feature looks really good. I like this site. Mixx Rocks.
I don’t consider mixx as a digg competitor, it is a growing social bookmark site I believe.
It’s all great to grow your brand and all, however, in this case, how are Stats Tracked? To me, this only grows Mixx because it’s on Mixx’s sub-domain. And according to Compete - Mixx is only getting around 326,000 uniques/ month.
Yes, co- & cross-branding is great, but how effective is it in the long-run if you are not able to control or even analyze your own brand.
Mark,
is there a way to track the traffic either received from this Mixx subdomain or even able to track the traffic that’s going “TO” the techcrunch.mixx.com?
That’s definitely great news….
Well, everything is great news:
The subcommunities part, of course, and this great article.
It’s like getting a big thumb up from one of the most respected blogs/sites
on the net… a cool and great feeling.
>> Social media fanatics will enjoy this new ability to carve out their own alcoves in Mixx. I’d really like to see Mixx take the next step and allow for a completely rebranded experience so that web publishers the net over can incorporate user contributed content seamlessly into their sites.<<
That says it all, really.:TechCrunch not only sees Mixx.com as a pioneer/innovator but also as the site that can deliver the goods.
Makes me glad to have made the decision to be part of the Mixx community and proud to see that we’ve got the support and trust of great people like you guys at TechCrunch. Thanks for that.
I think it is a great idea, if they can get the community to try and self promote each of these subdomains to get stuff submitted to them. If digg did this it would be an instant hit, but does Mixx have enough traffic to cover sub-dividing the attention of its users yet?
sent from: fav.or.it [FID288645]
@ #6
Completely untrue. I’ve been a user/tester since it was private beta and I’ve always been notified of new followers because I took the time to do my settings correctly. I would add also that you have 3 submissions in 7 months (according to your profile) so how can you offer a valid opinion of this beta?
@ everybody
Digg = /b/tard wannabes and griefers = waste of my time
I love Mixx. This new feature is so exciting. Joy!
The design is sweet, I have joined.
It would boost membership if somehow Mixx can be integrated with small online communities such as forums and white label social network software to the point that includes css customizations.
Great addition to an already great site!
Mixx has taken yet another step into giving their community what they want. This is awesome. I got started in Mixx early and have noticed nothing but great things coming from them. They never cease to amaze me. Great job guys!
thank you:)
Kerry Parkins, VP of Products at Mixx sat on a White Label Social Network panel I moderated a few weeks ago at Graphing Social Patterns East and we talked about this new Mixx feature/option. More details including a video of the discussion can be found here:
http://www.somewhatfrank.com/2.....l-soc.html
Cheers,
FRANK
isn’t this similar to the beta-stage SocialMedian?
The message board on TechCrunch - Mix is broken. Can’t post there.
This is a great addition to the Mixx community. What’s cool about this (that wasn’t really touched on in the post) is that you can take an existing Mixx group and upgrade it to a community - very useful for already successful groups with no rework.
@Rob,
In or to start a topic, you need to be a member of that community. If you go ahead and join the TechCrunch community, you will be able to start a topic. We apologize, our error message is not the best and we are working on that right now.
Cheers,
Will
I think this is a great new feature and will help go along way to providing new features in this space. I have seen the work that Kerry Parkins, VP of Products did when I was at AOL, and she has a great reputation of listening to the customer. The ability to add in tabs based on the topics of interest is a great feature. I may be using this on on eof the online communities that I am currently building surrounding the nline dating community.
Great work
Frank
check this out.
http://www.google.com/trends?q.....amp;sort=0
This feature is seriously cool. What I love about Mixx is that there is constant innovation on the site. Further the innovation, design, and planning appears to be incredibly thoughtful- with an eye to and understanding of the user.
Thanks Mixx!
Mixx has been growing rapidly recently especially after CNN started using them. Check it out - you won’t be disappointed.
And yes, Digg sucks big time.
I’m with Mark (author), our business would be much more interested in a full white label offering. As a matter of fact, we’re building our own right now because nobody has the features we need.
I don’t know how the partnership/business would work, but we need to have a seamless look and feel to our site. Our site is broken up contextually a number of ways so the “sub-reddit” style is a requirement.
The folks at Mixx, Digg or Reddit would probably say that type of business model isn’t viable. However, as we’re creating our solution, we’re keeping in mind the ability to spin-off a separate business. So, in some ways, they’re providing incentive for the creation of more competitors.
“TheChris”
apparently you have NIH syndrome and missed the announcement of Reddit’s open sourcing. You are a genius…FAIL WHALE!
this is really great… good job Mixx
Smart move. I’ll be a little more impressed once I see an actual online (non-echo chamber) community emerge from this feature…
On a related note - does the statement “Ning for Digg” seem a little ridiculous to anyone else? Sign of the times, I suppose…
Hope the Mixx message board is better than the crappy one you guys have now.
i just started a community at MIXX… and so far i love it.
most of all i like the way you can organize the bookmarks into categorizes
http://coffee.mixx.com/
I CREATED A COMMUNITY ON MIXX. BUT WHEN WE TRY TO SUBMIT A LINK , WE ARE SHOWN A VIDEO AD AFTER EVERYTHING IS DONE AND ONE CANT UNDERSTAND WHERE TO GO..ITS CRAZY AND STUPID
it is really frustrating to see the message BABIES AND LEMON DO NOT MIX on this page when ou are trying to submit link (and have done 10 times) ..if this is the quality of service, i dont think they will go very far