Vox Tip: Adding items to your blog using Re-Blog
While exploring Vox, have you ever seen a YouTube video or Amazon item that you'd like to be able to quickly share on your own blog? We've got just the thing for you! Vox has a great Re-Blogging feature that lets you add YouTube and Amazon items to your blog with just one click.
Let our pal Wally show you how it's done! Wally is taking a look at some of the latest audio additions in Explore when he sees an album that catches his eye: Billboard Top Hits of the 90's. The songs immediately take him back to the summer evenings on the Jersey Shore with his friends before they all went their separate ways after high school. Each song from groups like Ace of Base and Barenaked Ladies has a strong memory attached to it, and he wants to share some of those stories on his blog.
Wally is a busy guy and maybe just a bit lazy, so the thought of having to go to his blog and then find the album in order to get started on a post about it almost stops him from even bothering with it. Suddenly, he realizes that he can bypass all of that by just clicking the "Re-Blog This" button next to the album. Re-Blogging has saved the day!
Normally, we wouldn't encourage anyone to emulate Wally because he can be a bit odd, but in this case, he's the perfect role model! Explore audio, videos, and books on Vox, and see what you find that starts you wandering down memory lane. Go to the individual asset page for any item that catches your eye, and then click "Re-Blog This". With one click, the YouTube video or Amazon book, CD or DVD is added to your library, and you're taken to a Compose page with that item already inserted. Just type whatever you want to say and then click Save to save your post.
For more information about Re-Blogging, check out Re-Blogging Vox Assets. Re-Blogging is a great opportunity for sharing content on Vox. As Wally might say: "Whoomp! Re-Blog This!"
Comments
Thanks for the new improvements! What about being able to ad iBloks to pages? They're fun and they woud add a but of additional personalized persona to blogs!
Thanks!
Thank you, I actually noticed it last night after seeing a youtube post of the openning song of the video game Kingdom Hearts 2. But I favorited it on youtube instead. Haha. Since I'm new to Vox, I didn't even know that was a new feature. XD
First of all... you should creat a "vox talks" blog or post your "vox talks" posts here... and ALWAYS provide a permalink to a blog based version of the email. I wanted to blog about it... but I have no way to reference it... and I have to way to leave a comment in response.
Here's the think I wanted to ask about.
Cross-posting. Can I JUST cross post to Livejournal?
... or can I cross post to blogger.com, wordpress, independant moveable type install, myspace or other platforms too.
In this age most of your hard core bloggers have MULTIPLE blogs or already have a blog someplace else. Your service therefore would gain much more value if it is an open and interoperable platform, not a walled garden or silo.
Quite frankly put, I love vox, but I will not use it unless I can cross post from it to my blogger.com blog at mmeiser.com or any of my various wordpress blogs.
This is to say you have to start thinking of yourself as a "publishing platform", not just another poointlessly closed social network. The obvious example of the difference are youtube and flickr. I can cross post / blog a photo from flickr to any of major platforms. Flickr also provides source code that I can copy and paste to drop a photo in any web page or blog. Wile youtube I don't believe has any cross post feature the absolute key to success has been it interoperability with myspace and infinite other sites with it's very simple copy and past source code.
You should be thinking about this sort of interoperability. This is quite simply called the "network effect"... do to the very long tail of the web you must acknowlege that 99.99% of the value is going to be OUTSIDE of your webserice at any one time.
This could translate to advising your direction in MANY ways.
1) API's
2) widgets/bookmarklets for blogging about anything... on any webpage.. with a special look at the most popular platforms like myspace... and especially media sites like zoomr, flickr, youtube and others to reblog / revlog. Images, photos, mp3's, podcasts, videos.
3) Here's a particularly brilliant idea. Why not after you enable cross posting for all the major platforms... and people can configure multiple blogs to post to... why not provide an in page widget viewable on ever post anywhere on VOX to "blog about this post". This would allow any user to blog about any post on vlox... any public post that is... to ANY major blogging platform...
Once again, this brilliant idea is not completely original to me... this is exactly what Flickr does to ensure that flckr is HEAVILIY linked to OUTSIDE of Flickr. And if you would think of yourself as a "publishing platform" instead of a walled garden social network you would realize that this functionality could have the same tremendous importance to you ensuring that people OUTSIDE of vox, are linking back to and talking about vox, instead of just having a closed loop incestuous conversation about posts on vox by other vox members about stuff on vox.
This is especially important because you host photo's, videos, audio, podcasts and such, do you not?
It would be incredibly advantagous for you to and your users too to encourage people to blog about this media widely across the web... that is of course unless the user has marked it private.
Of course it goes without saying you should also provide copy and pasteable source code for your media elements as well... and also the standard fare "email this to a friend" function... and you may wish to allow them to disable these "sharing feature" but I guarentee you none will.
In summary...
1) Vox is a publishing platform... you need to give people the ability to publish (aka. cross-post) to any blog in addition to vox. This is especially important because you host media like photos, videos, and audio. If VOX is to be were I keep my gallery of all my images... I'm going to need to be able to blog them to any of my blogs, just like Flickr. Anything less will not do and I will otherwise not use VOX for anything... photosharing, podcasting or videoblogging let alone blogging. I don't need "yet another social network", but I desperately could use a really good hosting and publishing platform that does all types of media not just one type of media like youtube (videos), Flickr & zoomr (images)... or any of the various podcasting or videoblogging specific hosts.
Be THE publishing platform.
OK
2) Be a SHARING PLATFORM, encourage sharing outside of VOX... i.e.
a) an in page re-blogging widget that encourages people to blog about anything on vox (photo, video, blog post or otherwise) to ANY blogging platform
b) provide copy/paste at the owners discretion to post any media element (image, audio, or video) to any web page.
c) provide an "email this to a friend" of course as well.
That's it for me.
I trust I've gotten my point across.
Do this and you might start to make a convert out of me.
These things would be obvious, indeed they might seem obvious, but what is obvious is that you don't understand the nature of your tility as a platform for publising and sharing what what has already been published.
Also, you should thank me and hire me as a paid consultant. LOL. Will work for food.
-Mike of mmeiser.com/blog and mefeedia.com
P.S. And what's up with the [this is good] pull down with 14 different languages... wtf mate.. I have no idea wether it's in reference to the post... i.e. am I saying "this post is good"... or wether I'm agreeing that I'm logged in as the proper person... One thing is clear though, it is a rediculous featuritious distraction, and downright annoying. This is to say nothing of why it's a pull down and in 8 different languages... don't even try to justify that... it is completely unecissary and I hope it will go away. Hell! Why not have a checkbox that I have to click to agree to your terms of service on every post too!? It would be equally as frivilous and distraction!
You guys are good... but obviously your could use some outside usability, workflow, and information architecture feedback. Again I offer my services. I trust I've made my point. :)
Looking at my post it now starts.
I think I just aggreed that his blog post is good, but I don't know.
What an extremely cryptic, anoying, and frivilous distraction.
You guys crack me up.
P.S. Please feel free to respond to me right here. I'm using co.mments.com to track responses to my comments. You guys should check into comment tracking to. co.mments.com is bloody brilliant. I say that and I have no affiliation with them. I just love their product. You should try it, just make sure set your preferences to have them email you responses. It threads brilliantly in gmail or othr threaded mail apps.