Perhaps I’m not on top form today, I’ve wrapped a scarf around my neck in the height of summer because I’ve managed to crick something or other serious in there, but when I received an email from Kenneth Yeh (co-founder of Blogged.com), instinct and adrenaline (and a little caffeine) kicked in and I took to tapping away at the keyboard with a few suggestions and a little praise to soften the blow. I wouldn’t want to put the guy off, but as I said to Kenneth,” I like Blogged.com, but I’d much rather love it.”

I don’t know exactly why I prefer, say BlogCatalog.com to Blogged.com, they are both pretty similar in function and purpose. It’s very difficult to predict the ‘magic ingredient’ for a thriving blog community, but I did offer a few pointers that came to mind. As soon as I had mailed Kenneth I realised that some of my suggestions had already been implemented and it was simply a matter of prominence on the page. I think that somehow the mix of functions and social stratum of members at BC has managed to create a far less competitive, far more supportive environment than they could have hoped for. There seems to be an enormous amount of Ning.com and Etsy.com users who are well known for their enormous enthusiasm for their respective communities. Indeed this maybe an example of an emerging Web 3.0 Net (A combination of .Api functions and feed scraping offering web services rather than web sites – as with many popular social networks today and recommendation sites), where everything from search engines to blogs will be aggregated and created within the visitor’s browser. The more functionality a site offers, the more widespread its effect on the community, the more people join, the greater quality service it can offer.

I am used to blogging with WordPress and so I like to see a rich and diverse dashboard whenever I log into a profile page, many of the largest social networks do just that, although some I must admit are packed to the gills and almost create a feeling of information overload. Essentially a balance has to be maintained, too much can be as bad as too little control over your influence of a social network, a direction in which I believe most blog directory communities are leaning towards.

It could merely be impatience, or lack of concentration, I’m not asking for a ‘Fisher Price Activity Centre’ solution to the dashboard layout, I don’t need enormous flashing buttons, but I do like to see both my contributions and others in the same place, I like a full update of recent activity, I like to feel I can chat with others, make connections and not necessarily rank or review blogs until I know them better.

Here’s a list of the relevant suggestions I have made for revamp 2.1 of Blogged.com :-

• A chat function, even a forum.
• A proper comments system devoid of reviews.
• Anonymous ratings to deter nepotism and in-fighting, preferably with IP address limits of one vote a month to ensure that people
  give blogs a decent time to improve their efforts.
• A more relevant search system and a featured section for the latest members to introduce themselves and their blogs.
• A more prominent ‘add friend’ link – or is the favourites link doing the same thing? It should be made clearer.
• RSS feed listings displayed on each profile page.
• The opportunity to post relevant html links in comments/reviews section to encourage more debate in the comments would also help bring the place alive, links out invariably means more links coming back, as outside blogs realise they’ve been mentioned and their owners more often than not sign-up to either thank their fans or reject their critics. I wanted to point one blogger there who had written an article on the evolution of t-shirts to see the Ezine Articles article my partner had written about the ‘History of T-Shirts” – I’m sure they’d have found it fascinating, instead I found myself on a Blogger blog where no html comments were denied and so I didn’t bother.
• A user tag cloud based upon past searches, favourites, and friend’s feeds.
• Some listings for top reviewers and a chance to follow them on Blogged.

Maybe I’m missing the point, and even some of the above functions, it could all simply be a matter of making links more prominent, who knows?
It’s a very clean cut and smooth layout, the functionality, what I can see of it, is great. There are no technical problems, it’s well designed and obviously a very popular network, but in my heart of hearts I feel Blogged could do so much more.

[tags]blogs,blog marketing,fashion advertising[/tags]