Six Apart (best known for the blogging package MovableType) has a new blogging/social networking tool called Vox. As they describe it:
Vox is a new personal blogging service. It's all about ease of use, privacy control, playing well with other web services, and staying connected to the people you care about.
- Control exactly who gets to see each of your posts and photos.
- See all the posts from your friends and family on one page.
- Bring in content from other web services you already use (Amazon, YouTube, more).
Marc Canter has written a 10 part (!) series of posts about Vox:
- Neighborhoods = dynamic aggregation channel (I like it; where are the APIs?)
- Hardwired interfaces = ‘gotta start somewhere’
- New distribution channels = render RSS in Vox (So why can’t one take an RSS feed - and flow that into a Vox account?)
- Integrated Media Galleries
- Microcontent Publishing = something is better than nothing
- Ease of use = using Ajax effectively
- Hosted Experience = business model
- Mobile
- Community = How to get a bunch of folks to use your stuff (much of Vox’s ease of use can be attributed to this LACK of advanced features)
- Hustling = what makes SixApart successful (Andrew Anker is all about making money.)
Canter, of course, is the man behind PeopleAggregator, the website that ... um, does stuff with social networking.