Testing Vox

My main man George Kelly, whom I gave a WordPress.com invite to a while back, hit me up with a Vox invite. So I'm trying it out. Some initial thoughts…

• I'm already overwhelmed by the sheer number of blogs I write for, so regardless of Vox's merits, I doubt you're going to see much original content there. Problem is, you won't see any unoriginal content either — either I'm to dumb to find it, or there's no way to import an RSS feed or another blog's archive.
• Ditto for Flickr. I already upload my photos to any number of places, but mostly to Flickr. And again, there's no intuitive way for me to use my Flickr stream as my photo sidebar.
• That said, the way they've engineered the new modular layouts and designs is damn fancy. Though I still prefer the control (if not editing evironment) available with TypePad, and have been whining about the lack of custom template editing to the WordPress.com crew.
• I understand why Vox came pre-loaded with ads (for now unintrusive text ads at the bottom, at least for starter accounts), but for instance, why can't I add Google AdSense (a la Blogger) or, say, an Amazon Wishlist (for books and media listings) to my page automagically? Doesn't cost Vox anything and hell, they'd probably end up getting some vig in the aggregate.
• Some people might take this the wrong way, but the first (and lasting) impression I got with Vox is that it's LiveJournal with a better user interface. Some people may think that's a bad thing, but I don't. The sense of community on LiveJournal is so vibrant, but man, the only site it's beating in a beauty (and usability) contest is MySpace.

Pet peeves aside (and yes, some of the above could be applied generically to almost any free blogging tool), I do actually kind of like it, especially the look and feel. And it's obvious a lot of incredibly smart, experienced bloggers put a lot of thought and hard work into this. But I've been doing this a long time and have buttloads of time invested into a lot of blogs — including this one. Call it the curse of Yahoo 360, where the momentum I had of excitement about the product couldn't overcome the inertia of not wanting to start yet another blog.

My only concern is if reaching out to people who don't already blog is still a growth market. Granted, my first (and, so far, only) Vox invite went out to my mom — but even she's kept a blog or three in her day. I can, however, see it as something for someone who's new to personal blogging but has experience with, say, an internal office blog or a group blog with friends.

Anyway, drop me a line for an invite. And I have WordPress.com invites, too (so keep your catty WordPress vs. SixApart comments to a minimum, thanks).