I Got Invited to Vox!

I got a surprise in my inbox today - an invitation to try SixApart’s new service, Vox! If you haven’t heard already, Vox is a new blogging service that is designed to give you control over what you share and with whom you share it. Unlike TypePad or MoveAble Type, which are more professional tools, Vox aims to be more personal. If anything, Vox is more like LiveJournal, just better. More powerful, more customization, better tools.

So, the first thing I did was log in and set up my profile. With Vox, you can connect your flickr or  PhotoBucket account to Vox. You can also configure cross-posting from your current TypePad weblog. Also from your edit profile page, you can set up mobile posting as well as download the "XP Uploader," which really is just a registry file that allows you to upload multiple photos directly from your Windows XP computer.

From the "Explore" page, you can explore the Vox community — by tags, of course! From here, you can specifically search Vox for posts, audio, video, books, or photos. Apparently, you can (from the compose page) upload audio, video, or photos directly from your computer. You don’t actually upload books from your computer, though — when "posting books", you’re actually linking to Amazon, which posts a picture of the cover and a link to Amazon. Hmmm, I’ll have to see if this is integrated with the affiliate program. Also, when posting on Vox, you can tag your post and easily configure who is allowed to see it.

The Vox "Design" page lets you pick out a template to apply to your blog. For now, the selection is…ehhh. Most templates looks cutesy or just plain. Where are the "boy" templates? Vox won’t have myspace’s "uniqueness" factor unless people can create their own designs, or easily add designs others have created. I imagine there could be more templates coming as Vox gets closer to launching.

From the "Connect" page, you can search for other Vox users by name, email, or blog URL. Nice, but I’d like to see a way to import an address book. Who doesn’t have this feature these days? Heck, myspace has it. However, ahem, for the record, it only worked for me once at myspace, then never again.

Underneath your user photo, there’s a "neighborhood" link. From here, you can view your "friends pages," your "family’s pages," "friends & family," or your "entire neighborhood. This reminds me a lot of reading your LJ friends page, but without LJ’s custom groups.

Overall, Vox looks pretty good for a preview release. Clean, modern, easy, and Web 2.0ish. However, since SixApart bought LiveJournal, I’m wondering why create such a similar product? Granted, this is a very modern take on LJ, and yes, better tools, but the base concept is very much the same. Although there are now many "community" pages on LJ there are still just as many personal sites — sites which allow the posters to flag posts or their entire sites as "friends only." Does SixApart plan on porting their LJ’ers to Vox? Or are they just hoping they’ll switch if given free invites? Or maybe they just want to woo blogging newbies to this new community instead of having them join LJ? I’m not sure, but SixApart is marketing Vox’s privacy settings as if they this is something new (eg. "With Vox, we’ve given people control over what they share and who they share it with. We believe that control over privacy will give people the freedom to write and share with the people they care about.") I guess it’s just LJ done way better. LJ 2.0. They knew they could build a better one, so they said, "why not?" Hey, go SixApart. I love you guys. You know.

I’m posting some screenshots of Vox…on Vox. On TypePad, too.