Six Apart, the San Francisco-start-up behind Moveable Type and TypePad blogging platforms is adding a third one to the mix - Vox.
Up until recently, Vox was known by its code-name, Comet. It is a platform designed to maintain total control over the content published by the bloggers. SixApart has invited a few folks to take a look at the preview edition of the service. Comet, as you might remember, was supposed to be released in early 2006, but was delayed. Company executives had promised that an early version of the software would be available before end of may 2006. Some of the top level features include
* It allows you to control exactly who gets to see each of your posts and photos,
* It allows you to see all the posts from your friends and/or family on one page,
* It allows you to bring in content from other web services such as YouTube and Flickr.
Though the company is not likely to release the full version of the service until fall 2006, you can see that it is inspired by LiveJournal and has elements of social networking built into the service. My first impressions of this very early version of the service:
Pros:
* Despite all the Web 2.0 goodness, it is still simple and straight forward service for non-techies.
* The beautiful templates are going to make it popular with the mainstream users.
* It is relatively easy to add personal content such as photos and videos.
* Composing posts is rather simple.
Cons:
* It doesn’t work on Safari. (Okay that is just my personal gripe.)
* More as I find them.
9 comments so far
11:43 PM PT
I was wondering what happened to Comet. Is it a separate offering or is it meant to be integrated into existing services? I was under the impression this project was meant to be the next generation of Six Apart’s existing services? TypePad 2.0?
12:16 PM PT
It’s no wonder that they have been so very slow to introduce upgrades for MovableType. It is very obvious that they want to continue to expand there services business and what appears to be only token expansion and improvements to MovableType
2:05 PM PT
Six Apart is about a year behind the other guys. Everybody else has rolled out comparable services (Um, does MSN Spaces or Yahoo 360 ring a bell??). Let’s not pretend this is anything new.
4:31 AM PT
it’s not something new, neither was blogger when it started, or google,
do we want new, or do we want optimum.
ming
9:28 AM PT
I love the social networking aspects of LiveJournal, but given how Six Apart has been treating LiveJournal users lately I’m not going to be straining at the bit to try any new service from them (ie. the recent furor with the LJ abuse team’s handling of abuse complaints, http://www.promom.org/bf_info/mp.html and http://ljabuse.blogspot.com )
5:55 PM PT
SixApart Launches Vox, Other Properties Stagnating?…
4:06 AM PT
I think this is very promising. A mix of customisation, sharing and privacy control that will appeal to a slightly older audience than myspace et al. Of course, that’s a small market than the under-25s, but it’s a market nonetheless.
I don’t Six Apart has been neglecting it’s other products either - MT will get an update shortly.
10:58 AM PT
We’ve moved most of our company blogs away from Typepad/MT to WordPress - we feel it’s a much more flexible platform. I think SixApart has lost some momentum in their core offering and I’m not at all sure they are going to make up for it my making an incursion into another crowded market.
10:18 PM PT
I just created my first blog on Vox. It’s pretty cool and will serve my purposes for now. I still think that when I get a bit more serious about blogging I ‘ll look into WordPress. For now I got the free invite to Vox and I am going to use it to blog about an upcoming relocation move to the southwest for my family and friends. I’d like to see Vox include a blog roll function.
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