Need some reviews/opinions of PublicBlend

[Brian]

Not going to go into how to use the site, features, etc. Just want people to check it out and let me know what they think. What would make it more useful for you personally? We've gone through our second round of development updates, and need to know what to tweak to increase our userbase (which isn't bad considering how new it is. We've had over 2,000 new members join in the past couple months)

http://www.publicblend.com

[justin]

Just seems like another dime a dozen social networking and news/collaboration site. No offense or anything, maybe those sites just aren't my thing, I don't even use myspace or facebook or whatever (gasp!). If I signed up and made profiles at every site like that I would have 8 billion online accounts.

I guess a good question would be, what makes it unique?

Justin

[Redteg]

Is this the same as tagsum with just a different name?

[Brian]

Is this the same as tagsum with just a different name?

Quite a bit has changed actually, but yes, we did change the name, and added a couple dozen new updates and features.

[Brian]

Just seems like another dime a dozen social networking and news/collaboration site. No offense or anything, maybe those sites just aren't my thing, I don't even use myspace or facebook or whatever (gasp!). If I signed up and made profiles at every site like that I would have 8 billion online accounts.

I guess a good question would be, what makes it unique?

Justin


There are actually several things that make it unique, but if you didn't notice them, then that's the problem I have to address on the site itself. The site needs to sell itself. So that's where I need to start :).

Thanks, I appreciate the feedback thus far. It really does help. I need honest opinions or I can't fix it :)

[Brandon]

I just glanced at the photos page and it looks the same as digg's photos.

[vince]

Turn it into a hard core porn site from 11 pm till 4am.

[nicklk]

I think its kind of retarded, the fact that something is posted on here.....then you go to publicblend, then you go to the site the video or photos are hosted on like YouTube or etc.

[Brian]

Turn it into a hard core porn site from 11 pm till 4am.

Kind of funny that you should mention that. I'll post something later in the week

[Brian]

I think its kind of retarded, the fact that something is posted on here.....then you go to publicblend, then you go to the site the video or photos are hosted on like YouTube or etc.

I post here to get exposure for the site. The purpose is to aggregate data from hundreds of sites so you go there to catch up on the latest tech news from all over the internet, or the latest in politics, or funny videos or whatever. I think you missed that point completely.

[Brandon]

I agree with Nick. I understand the point of posting here for exposure but the fact that public blend is then linked to other outside sources is silly. As far as pictures and videos go anyway, it would be better if they were just hosted on PB. News is different.

I did notice that the pool shots video was embedded or whatever right onto the PB site, that's not quite as bad and if that's the way they all are then nevermind. That's the only one on PB I've clicked on the past week or so.

[Brian]

All of the photos and video can be viewed right on publicblend by simply clicking on the thumbnail.

[nicklk]

I post here to get exposure for the site. The purpose is to aggregate data from hundreds of sites so you go there to catch up on the latest tech news from all over the internet, or the latest in politics, or funny videos or whatever. I think you missed that point completely.

No, I know the point of it. Just kind of a PITA

[Brian]

It's a pain in the ass to get updates on hundreds of sites from a single place? That doesn't make sense to me...

[nicklk]

It's a pain in the ass to get updates on hundreds of sites from a single place? That doesn't make sense to me...

I guess my main perspective is to the links being posted on here.

If I have publicblend book marked on my home pages, and it comes up each time.....then yes I find the convience

[Brandon]

All of the photos and video can be viewed right on publicblend by simply clicking on the thumbnail.

You never addressed my first post about them being exactly the same pictures as digg.

Also, one thing that bugs me about digg is that since the pics are hosted on outside sources, there's a lot of broken links or links that have exceeded bandwidth.

[Brian]

I just went over the submissions in the photos section, a few are the same as pictures submitted to digg, i'm sure that's bound to happen. Not sure exactly what you want there. A photo that is hugely popular on the internet is bound to show up on both sites.

Yes, that will happen from time to time. Nothing much can be done about that. Copyright laws would frown upon us creating our own copy of the data hosted on someone elses site.


For the others, social media isn't new. Millions of people use sites like this. We've simply created some unique features such as the customizable home page where you can keep track of just the information that interests you. The more solid social aspects of the site, the ability to follow stories through a hierarchy as they happen viewing related stories, etc.

[vince]

Its like talk soup only on the interwebz. Good idea.