Vox, the new service of Six Apart, went live on November 29th. I had the opportunity to betatest Vox for a couple of weeks, testing its features and delving into content other users provided.
Vox is a free social website with similar features like Myspace, Tribe, Xanga, Orkut, Tagworld, Facebook and others. You can publish your posts, including audio (your own music, or reviews of what you are listening to), add pictures, video clips, or comment on other people’s posts. You can also connect to other people by adding them to your neighbourhood, or asking them to be your friend.
So what’s the difference to other social websites?
First of it all, Six Apart’s main expertise is blogging. With Movable Type, they had a big share in contributing to the blog revolution. Some would say they started it off, but they didn’t invent it. Blogging had been around since the web started, but it took a while until it became a cultural phenomenon. To make that happen, software that was easy to use was required. Web based applications like Movable Type made it easier to update content, and everything grew from there, enabling regular people to publish content on the Web.
Now, in 2006, we juggle with categories, use tag clouds and add rich media content from Flickr, Youtube, Revver or Google Video to our blogs like we had never done anything else.
What people want
Vox is an interesting concept that incorporates a number of capabilities from other social websites. It sets itself apart by not trying to be a dating site, or a friendship networking site. You can do that with Vox, but it’s actually up to you what you do with it. By its core, Vox is your little closet with your favorite things in it. Just with the difference you share it with the world. It’s your repository, your journal and your scrapbook. Vox does the same you can do with iWeb from Apple. You can create your own website and share it with the world. Unlike with Apple’s service though, Vox is free and you don’t have to buy a desktop application to make it happen.
For the majority of geeks, technoratis and the rest of the Internt-consuming and experience-sharing society, for everybody who is used to blogging, this is nothing new.
What makes the big difference is Vox’s approach. LiveJournal (which was acquired by Six Apart) and Blogger have been around for a while, and already, they make blogging pretty easy. Six Apart also runs TypePad, which is essentially a preinstalled payable service, based on technology of Movable Type.
Vox takes it one level higher, adding fun with lots of different themes you can choose from, making usage of different media a breeze, adding social connectivity functions, and, most importantly, it just works.
My little universe
It doesn’t feel bloated yet, and everything backend is happening quite fast. I hope this won’t change with growing popularity of Vox. Also, right now I notice a certain feel of anarchy and self organization. It’s one of the first Web 2.0 apps that doesn’t feel like “I want to be like every Web 2.0 app out there”.
Without any visual resemblance, without making any connection to it, Vox incorporates an Apple-like approach of usability and simplicity. It feels like something made for people, not for techies, and it doesn’t have the typical elitism that has emerged lately from blogging communities.
Vox makes everything technical easy and approachable, and achieves this using AJAX, RSS and mostly Web Standard compliant technology. Typical obstacles of creating your content are moved out of the way. You don’t have to think about video formats, about how to set up picture galleries or how to add audio to your posts. You can focus on writing and exploring. You can spend some time and play with it, and your entertainment satisfaction is much higher than when you’re reading a magazine or watch a TV show.
This is how sharing works best. Nearly everybody has something to share. For years, my dad has sending out emails with 8 MB attachments of pictures of newborn grand children. He used email because it was the easiest way he knew.
Vox doesn’t only bring back the fun for people used to blogging. It also makes blogging accessible to everyone, helping us to let out the inner child and simply be ourselves.
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