Vox: Smart Move for Six Apart

Posted by: Heather Green on June 30

Ok, so with a new blog being created every second, you wouldn’t really think that there is a need for new blogging technologies aimed at newbies. But though Technorati tracks more than 37 million blogs, the fact is we still don’t know what blogging is going to evolve into. And, more practically, it’s still not as easy as it should be to blog.

Ok, ok, so you might say, hey, it’s easy to cut and paste, when you want to add a photo or a YouTube link to your site. But my response is, if you think that’s the case, you’re still a geek. And most of the world isn’t made up of geeks, no matter how many you know….

And this gets me to my point about Vox, the new blogging platform under development by blogging pioneer startup Six Apart. Mena Trott and Andrew Anker stopped by this week to talk about Vox.

The innovation is how much they have simplied blogging. And I think that this is finally the thing that might get my mom or cousin to blog. You never see any HTML and you don’t have to search through your directories for images or on YouTube, because they create handy image driven storage places for your pieces of art. It shows what they have learned from their LiveJournal acquisition.

But the next step is allowing you to create filters around who sees your posts. And what’s intriguing about this is how it can lead to a different use of voices within the same blog. This idea appeals a lot to me. Right now, I feel like I have one set, determined voice. But if I were writing for my close friends, it would be different. And if I were writing for my family, it would also have a different tone. I haven’t thought much about how the ability to create different levels of conversation will play out, but it feels like a very powerful notion. And while I know it’s possible through other tools to do this, what’s nice is the combination here in one package of a variety of innovations.

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