Now we’ ve come to the secret weapon of Vox - its community aspects.

What they’ve done is carfeully study Flickr’s approach to social networking and glommed onto much of it.  One simply says “this is a connection” and they have the option of adding attributes that say “they’re my friend” or “they’re family” or both.  Exactly the way Flickr does it.

Then they added the ‘dynamic aggregated channel’ approach and called it a neighborhood.

This same neighborhood construct is then used for creating aggregated video, audoo and image channels - and seems to be the ‘grouping’ capability of Vox.  I predict they’ll eventually add Groups - as well - but not for a while.  It’ll confuse Mena’s Mom too much - until of course they want to create a parchessi club or knitting circle.

But much of Vox’s ease of use can be attributed to this LACK of advanced features.

What will be interesting to watch is whether or not these aggregated blog channels go somewhere - do something outside of Vox.  I bet they will.

We’ve got a similar ‘group blog’ approach on our Home pages - and I really think people like contirbuting to a ‘group voice.

Vox’s real strengths come from its people - the folks who make up the network.  I’ll touch more on the ‘power’ of SixApart in my last installment, but for now let me say that the inner core, Arrington 100,000 have proven to be influential - but not necessarily when it comes to producing commercially successful software.  So I think Vox will be a real test for that.

SixAparts abilityt  oget 50,000 using Vox is not under question, the issue is how does it become mainstream?

There are other things that contribute to Vox’s warm and fuzzy community feel. Like their invite emails are really cute and they even ask:

“Would you like to upload an image for someone ELSE’s profile?”

I believe that’s the first time I’ve seen that offered!  How nice of them!  I love the notion of them assuming that someone ELSE will be setting up theaccount - for Mom - of course.

So that’s the modern day notion of community - one that includes one’s parents and assumes that some geek is setting up it for their Mom.

Now the question remains - does that mean we (the geeks) SHOULDN’T use Vox?

I really think we should.  Cause its the best blogging platform out there right now.  Itr has all the right features and will hopefully open up with APIs - soon.

Right?

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