A new friend of ours, Magic Safire, was asking us at Bloggercon which Blogging tool to use for a less technical user. Naturally I responded WordPress since I love it and think it hits the usability/configurability sweetspot for power users like me while still being simple enough for intelligent beginning Bloggers like Safire. If I had to answer that same question today, I would certainly pause a moment before saying the tool of choice is Vox. It is quite simply the best and most elegant UI I have seen when it comes to social media publishing tools. While I am sure I will find a few areas lacking as I kick the tires some more, I am just so blown away by how smooth an experience it is that I felt compelled to write a post on it using my Vox Site to suggest some ideas and try to publicly sell some product development ideas to them.
After Gnomedex I was speaking with Kathleen Craig about what my big takeaways were for the conference. I really saw two big things that were new and interesting to me – 1, that Gnomedex is the new TED for social media tool developers and interested others and 2, that the most important and successfull companies today were really offering a UI solution, not a complicated/protected technology solution. Vox will prove this to be true or not.
Though they are different products with different markets, in comparison to People Aggregator, which shares some backend philosophies, Mena, Ben, Anil et al are light years ahead. (BTW, Marc Canter – see a name like Vox falls within the name does not matter category – a name like People Aggregator just sux because it is too Orewellian – when you are ready for a new name and have some dollars to spend with a creative friend who does branding, call me). In regards to more direct competitors, Blogger may as well make plans to shutter its doors unless it decides to finally invest in some much needed upgrades in order to stay relevant in a world where people can Get the Vox so easily. Now once they have it setup so we can show our music too and share affiliate revenues with them on all the books, videos and other things that get aggregated there, I might switch myself. Make it easy and make it beautiful and they will come!
So have you Got Vox? Email or call me for an invite, I have a few left for friends…
