Instablogs transformation
Well it’s been a while since I visited Instablogs(which i should have, since that’s Asia’s most busiest web 2.0 hub). Last time i talked about them when they announced to go v 2.0. Today after reading Darnell Clayton over blogherald i found out that something has changed about Instablogs.
Overview
Instablogs got new web 2.0 ish looks now, there is a “beta” at the end of their logo now, well everyone start with a beta now days,don’t they. Surprisingly the page loading time has been lengthier (even after few try), i was expecting faster performance. Instablog’s Reading room homepage served as the central display of all over network, showing four latest articles from every channel (the most latest one will come with little summary). Not only that this homepage is also housing- List of channels, seven latest news from “Newsroom”, top seven members list(with picture :P) and internetwork Tags. You can sort the reading room by popular and latest tab too, where brief post summaries will be listed. The option that gave me a buzz is, you can switch your list look between button/row style by simply clicking icons on the top right corner.
The search option has been improved as well as expended, user can now search between community, blogs as well as images. The news room section is awesome idea, as its brings all the news from different sources and sorted into channels, if someone already done writing on that, will be marked story done otherwise write now. You can play around with the news by sorting them with different filters like time, date etc. You can even submit a story or lead too.
The last section that is community, or much more you can say database of the members. You can search them alphabetically (Screen Name). They make a Tag cloud like system that shows which members are more actives.
Reward?: Instablogs actually declare them as blog publishing platform and indicating some kind of reward in exchange of blogging but as Darnell said it isn’t clear. I hope Instablogs will take a look into that and be more specific. Since this might mislead the users who wants to sign up. Here is what listed in their help section-
Instablogs Community is a personalized platform that endeavors to bring bloggers and readers closer.
Through this platform, you …………………….. Moreover, on top of this you’ll be able to reap plenty of rewards for your active participation and may end up as an editor for any channel of your choice.
Registration
Registration is painless and quick, first step you just need to provide full name, date of birth city and country (and off course the email address). Second step after you click on activation link sent to you, you need to provide as usual stuffs like- username (which will be a sub-domain in Instablogs), blog name etc. You are done!
Inside
Now you personalized, organize, socialize your blog. Though i just noticed there is only 4 themes to choose from out that two is useless for most of the blogger (Godfather and Resident evil theme) since those two are specific subject targeted. They need to work on that, at least giving user freedom to change some portion of design will allow user create more unique stuff. And about the reward mentioned in help section, i didn’t find any trace of reward statistics in admin panel. The whole blog system give a feel of WordPress MU with serious tweaks. You can not use windows live writer like desktop blog publishing with it as the blog API’s isn’t RSD supported.
Final Thoughts
Despite of few technical limitation,lack of customization and not so helpful help section Instablogs done a great job. Notable features like- community wide searching & tagging, admin panel news subscriptions are very rarely found in social community sites. For start-up and mid-level blogger who are not that concern about customization, Instablogs will definitely give them more then a Buzz.
[tags]Instablogs, web 2.0, Instablogs 2.0, Social Networking, Community, tagging/tags]
