The first time you use this feature, you have to authenticate with each of the social networks. Once configured, links are published to your Facebook News Feed and to your Twitter stream. (Note: Facebook Connect only works on Firefox at present). An option to email items instead is also provided.

The individual articles found in RSS feeds also have a sharing option which is activated by clicking on a yellow star next to the word "share." This feature lets you save articles with an optional note for later reading . The saved articles are placed in your private activities section.

It is this last feature that has Netvibes' users up in arms. Because the star and link reside on a separate line beneath the article headline and introductory text, it takes up valuable screen real estate which impacts the number of entries which can be displayed on a page. Out of 26 some comments (at time of writing) on the Netvibes blog, a surprising majority of them (25) were against the yellow star for this very reason. Everyone was requesting that this feature be optional, so they could shut it off.

Although 25 people aren't the entire Netvibes user base, they are a good representative of the most enthusiastic of Netvibes users - the ones who take the time to read and respond to the company blog entries. In this case, we think they may have a point. Hopefully Netvibes will take this into consideration and make some tweaks.

However, the user outrage issue shouldn't overshadow the big news of the day: a Facebook Connect sighting in the wild! We just love those. After Netvibes fixes the above issue, the new sharing features are likely to become popular ways to make the entire Netvibes experience more social and fun.

With the new SmartSpace service from GoDaddy, anyone can create a personal web site which aggregates your activity from across the social web, combine that with other sources of news and information, and then create a personalized start page containing everything of interest to them. The service can also be used as a blogging platform with social elements like chat already built in. The idea is that you can use the SmartSpace platform to create the kind of site that's right for you, whether that's a social network of sorts, a traditional web site with social elements, a place to host your podcasts, or whatever else you want.

SmartSpace is designed to be easy to use, even for non-technical users. With a click of a button, you can grab content from sites like flickr, YouTube, Google News, Facebook, MySpace, or any other web site that offers an RSS feed.

You can even customize this content to your own personal preferences. For example, if you only want to see Flickr photos of lolcats, you can just type in "lolcat" in the tag field provided. Alternatively, you could select the RSS feed of a particular person's photos.

In addition to this dynamic content form across the social web, GoDaddy also makes available various pre-selected news feeds which you can add if desired. This content is categorized by subject, and is similar to the types of selections that many of today's personalized homepages offer.

Chat & Email

The Chat application lets you have online text conversations right on the site. With the included administrative controls, you can launch a room, invite users, ban users, and participate in both public and private chat sessions. Again, there's nothing technical involved in adding this to your page - the app is already set up and ready to use. All you have to do is make a few choices about how it's displayed and whether it's loaded by default when you log in.

Also, because SocialSpace users have purchased a domain name via GoDaddy, there's an option to set up email addresses using that name. The interface for doing so is much easier to manage than GoDaddy's usual UI for creating email addresses (an ugly and geeky interface). Here, you're basically able to push a button and set up multiple email addresses associated with your domain. The inboxes for these can then be added as widgets to your homepage.

Photo Albums

If you don't keep your images online with a web service like Flickr, you also have the option to make your SmartSpace an online photo album using the SmartSpace photo application. With this, you can upload photos from your computer and then share those photos both publicly and privately in albums that are added to your page.

Web Site and Blogs

For text-based content, you can choose to either add a web site or blog to your homepage. With these options, you can select from a number of pre-built templates to configure the site. Although not as robust a platform as WordPress, the blog will probably work fine for casual users who want to take advantage of the other elements of the SmartSpace service.

Just Another Personalized Homepage Or A New Type Of Social Network?

SocialSpace could be linked to some patent filings the company filed earlier this year which describe a web portal that functions as a social network aggregator. According to those filings, the aggregation could be done using login systems like OpenID. Although there's no mention of OpenID integration in the SmartSpace support documents yet, we hope that integration is something they plan to add in the future.

Still, even without OpenID, what GoDaddy has launched today is a viable competitor to the other personalized homepages out there like iGoogle, My Yahoo, Netvibes, etc. But GoDaddy's SocialSpace goes beyond what those sites offer in a number of ways. Although widgetized content like photos and RSS feeds can be added to nearly any start page today, GoDaddy actually lets you own a domain name, set up a blog or website and then easily, instantly turn it into a personalized social network that aggregates content from the social web and includes chat functionality for instant interactions with your friends.

Will SocialSpace kill MySpace and Facebook? That's highly doubtful, but it could be a nice aggregator for those looking to establish a web presence with minimal work. And because it's from GoDaddy, a household name thanks to their high profile TV commercials and ad campaigns, this move also represents what may be the final leap where "social media" fully crosses over to the mainstream use and acceptance.

More Info

Prices for SmartSpace start at $4.99/month for 2 months. From there, the prices are as follows: 12 mo: $4.74/month, 24 mo: $4.49/month, or 36 mo: $4.24/month. You can watch a short introductory video here. ]]>Discuss]]> http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/godaddy_unveils_mainstream_social_web_aggregator.php http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/godaddy_unveils_mainstream_social_web_aggregator.php Products Mon, 13 Oct 2008 10:45:00 -0800 Sarah Perez Today Alltop, an aggregator of RSS feeds, launched. It's a very similar product to one of my daily refreshes, OriginalSignal. Only Alltop covers a much broader range of topics, 40 in total. Alltop's selection of feeds is savvy and wide-ranging - and I'm not just saying that because ReadWriteWeb is the first feed listed in 'Social Media' (although I am very pleased about that!). The service is being positioned as 'RSS for the masses', because it makes it very easy for non-tech people to find new sources to read.

There have been varying reactions to Alltop. Mike Arrington at TechCrunch wrote that Alltop is "just a big pile of nothing." I think he was referring to the fact that it is relatively easy to create an app like Alltop - and he referenced the Web 2.0 Workgroup homepage (developed by Fred Oliveira a few years ago) as an example. Others think that Alltop is filling a need, for mainstream people to get into the RSS reading scene. Mick Liubinskas wrote that "I can see my wife and even my dad using it." Mick said that "they are now both looking for stuff to read and are ready to venture outside of the news sits they know, but they are not quite sure where to start."

Chris Shipley of GuideWireGroup came to a similar conclusion to Mick, noting also that the sourcing of material is an important part of Alltop. Chris said that Alltop is "a collection of the stuff that top bloggers, Twitterers, and social media buffs like to read. It’s not the wisdom of crowds, so much as the wisdom of the most engaged social media advocates." I agree with Chris that the content selection on Alltop is smart and savvy - these are quality blogs. Certainly Alltop has a much broader set of sources than its inspiration, PopURLs (a collection of popular, but slightly cliched by now, blog and social media sources).

I like Alltop. It is a simple app, so I think Mike Arrington had a valid point there. But it's effective and it is definitely an easy scan for people looking for social news to read. It won't satisfy many early adopter types, who will continue to use the likes of Google Reader and Newsgator for 'heavy lifting' of RSS feeds. And early adopters will continue to use the likes of Netvibes and Pageflakes for their Alltop-like reading - i.e. when you just want to scan a bunch of your top news sources - because those apps are much more functional and configurable than Alltop.

Will Alltop entice mainstream readers to follow blogs and use RSS more? I hope it does, but there is still a psychological factor to overcome in getting mainstream people to read blogs. While some people recognize that blogs are as much a part of the news ecosystem as mainstream media these days, many others still see blogging as a way to let the world know what you had for breakfast. So a service like Alltop is unlikely to change the latter attitude, which is unfortunately the most common one (not helped by mainstream media, which often portrays blogs as superficial social networking sites).

RSS for the masses? Not sure I'd go that far, but Alltop is a nice, simple service that you can start pointing your non-geek friends and family to.

The new page, which the Beeb has dubbed a "lick of paint," draws on a number of so-called web 2.0 design aesthetics: rounded corners, large fonts, big buttons, a soft color palette, and a liberal dash of AJAX.

For now, the BBC site is using a cookie to remember user preferences, but the company plans to integrate the personalization options into a forthcoming identity management system to be launched sometime in January. The redesign was completed in a relatively short three-month period, and the BBC joins CNN, USA Today, and AOL News among major news web sites that have launched newer, more "web 2.0" designs this year.

The BBC's new design on the left vs. the old design on the right.

In June we compared the redesign efforts from the aforementioned major US news web sites. Those sites tended to emphasize user interaction (via comments, voting, story submission, etc.) or audio and video, while the BBC is emphasizing personlization. Which method makes more sense? It probably depends on your audience. The BBC's homepage serves users of not just their web site news service, but also their television and radio networks, so the portal route might make more sense. The BBC has a lot of content from various sources that users want to get to, and letting users define which content they see first may prove a popular feature.

In general, the BBC's beta site is much cleaner and easier to scan. The old (current) BBC web site is a mess of text links with no clear navigation. The new site still has a bit of navigation headache (i.e., I still have to dig through a block of links at the bottom of the page to get to the tech section), but because the content widgets can be personalized and moved, I can rework the page such that it shows me the latest tech headlines instantly at the very top.

The new design also places a greater emphasis on search, making it more apparent how to find what you're looking for, by placing a larger search box in a familiar place on the page. That is a vast improvement over the current situation, but I'd still like to see a cleaner, easier-to-navigate dedicated site navigation.

It is interesting to note that this is not the BBC's first attempt at personalization. Their myBBC service from 2001 was something like a stripped down, BBC-only version of MyYahoo! While myBBC ultimately didn't pan out, something tells me they may have more luck this time around. What do you think?