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August 31, 2006

vox redux

Hey. Neca asked for more information about Vox.
I learned about Vox reading Matt Haughey. He wasn't anyone I followed, but I just came across that post, and I just had a big uh-huh moment.

Here's what they say:

Vox is a new blogging tool from Six Apart, Ltd.. This is a unique and extraordinary type of blogging tool because we've put together the knowledge from TypePad, Movable Type, and LiveJournal and created a great new way to blog, with options for connecting to people and managing privacy at the same time.

Vox is a self-contained blogging system put together by Six Apart. They host it, they serve ads on it, you write it. They don't charge for the service.

You don't need to know any HTML to use it. In fact, you can't use HTML. Some people may find that frustrating, and I was one of them at first. But given that I code HTML for a living, I'm happy to just write and find multimedia, rather than spending time trying to get some great effect.

So essentially, initially, it's similar to Blogger in that its free. It's different from Blogger in a couple different important ways:
1) if you choose to put ads on your blogger blog, you earn that money; with vox, it comes with ads that support the service. You can't turn them off.
2) Vox is a community. You can read anything that's posted for public consumption, but if you're not a vox member, you can't comment.
3) Similar to LiveJournal, you choose your degree of revelation with Vox. We all are complicated people: we may want to write about a new opportunity, problems at work or home, or things that only your family would care about. With Vox, you can add people to your neighborhood (which is just a way of easily being able to read their entries), you can have friends, and you can have family. You decide who is what. And so you can write a friends only entry, and only your friends can read it or respond to it.

Mena Trott, the CEO of Six Apart, doesn't actually mention VOX in her talk at TED, but her banjo story talks about the painful difference of writing for the public vs writing for friends.. If you'd rather not stream the video, here's the short version:

In July of 2002, during the height of my traffic I wrote a weblog entry about wanting to purchase a banjo. The punchline being that I don't know how to play any musical instruments and that it was the sort of purchase that characterized my impulsiveness. And, in this weblog entry, I painted Ben as this overbearing tyrant of a husband who controlled my life and finances and couldn't understand that I just needed a banjo.

...

For those who knew me personally and those who had read my weblog since the beginning, the humor in this post was clear. Ben is as much an overbearing tyrant as I'm a professional banjo player.

...

So, back to the banjo post. I wrote it, turned on comments and sat back expecting the usual accolades that made this egoist tick. But then something different happened. In my comments and in my email inbox I received a different sort of comment. The tone could be summed up by this comment:

"Being married is about respecting each other. If your husband won't let you spend your collective money on a purchase you want, you should consider if this is the sort of man you want to spend your life with. After all, how much does he spend on beer in the course of a year."

Anyways, the offer is still open. I have invites. Just ask.

Posted at August 31, 2006

Comments

Posted by: Corrina at September 1, 2006 12:46 PM