More on Ziki
I really like the idea of Ziki, it aggregates personal content in a social environment
…I’ve posted about Ziki a while back but here’s a revamp.
Ziki covers 3 types of entities; for people, for companies, or aggregate zikis into a group.
- It’s a place where you can display content from all your feeds (also archives content)
- You can describe yourself with tags (find others who have described themselves with the same tags)
- You can upload your OPML (Reading List) and share it…lacks feed grazing.
- You can view your content by a cloud (word bursts)
- Add other Zikis (people) to your Network…also add private tags so you can find these people later
- Search for tags…I’d like to limit this to my Network…or even view a tag list for my Network (every search has a feed, and you can save searches)
- Add other Ziki sections to your Favourites
- Comments people leave on your Ziki…lacks a section to list comments you leave on other Zikis
- Find people who added your Ziki to their Favourites (Audience)
- Similar Zikis (based on similar tags)
Adding feeds
When you add a feed, you have to choose a feed type eg. posts
…if you then add another feed and choose “posts” again, then on the front page under the “Latest posts” heading you will see a river of news of the latest items from both these feeds.
If I have two blogs I’d like the option to see the latest items from each blog under it’s own heading…but then this will go against aggregating data by feed type for the community features.
Anyway, the Latest posts section has a link to see the feed sources, it also offers a spliced feed and an OPML (Reading List).
There are many feed types to choose from eg. if you use lots of social bookmark services, you can add these feeds under the “bookmark” feed type…don’t forget you get a spliced feed and an OPML.
Reason I’d like to make my own feed type or headings is that you can see a river of news for feed types anyway under the archives option.
I forgot to mention you also get a spliced feed and an OPML for your whole Ziki.
Groups
I guess the idea is for a group to have its own Ziki
…create or join a group.
This group feature is awesome you can read a river of news by feed type
eg. read mixed blog posts from all members, read mixed bookmarks from all members, etc…you can see this displayed on the front page, or use the Archives link.
Just like a person you can use tags to describe the group, you can even add a group to your favourites.
Feedback
I still don’t get the difference between “network” and “favourites”…if you add a ziki to “favourites” and that ziki has several feed types, then they will be added multiple times to your favourites. The you can sort your favourites by feed type…can’t this just be merged into the “network” section.
If you could make a closed group, this would be like a topic attention stream
…if you had 10 friends and each made a ziki, and in each ziki they added one feed each for the feed types: posts, bookmarks, comments, other (use this for comments you leave on other blogs), etc…
Just say these 10 people blog, bookmark, comment about a topic eg. knowledge management, then this group will be a one stop shop for posts, bookmarks, and comments related to knowledge management according to a closed group of 10 experts.
More…
I like the idea that people can discover others by tag, even for your network…what would be good is if people in a network could tag each other…kind of like a people yellow pages via tags people associate to themselves and tags others associate with them (reciprocating people tags seems more rounded).
Similar services:
- Tagalag, PeopleFeeds, 43 people
Startpages like PageFlakes, and Netvibes are similar in the way of aggregating all your feed content into one portal, PageFlakes even has a public view. But these 2 services are startpages which are more commonly used for a personal desktop, whereas services like Ziki are a space to aggregate your personal feeds within a share and discovery network, as this all occurs in a social environment.
Also similar are the Public RSS Readers, but again these aren’t in a social environment, and their focus isn’t on discovering people. Although the Public RSS Reader can display collated content from a person’s various feeds all in the one spot, the design of these services are not people centric…Ziki seems to capture each of a person’s feed and define it by feed type, each feed can be viewed separately.
Ziki has two parts; collating (re-syndicating) your content into one portal; then tagging yourself to discover similar content by people with similar interests.
Here are the more prominent Public RSS Readers
- SuprGlu, MySyndicaat, Kinja, Bozpages, Feedpile, kickRSS (most are limited to a river of news view…some allow to view contents by author tags)…Blogdigger groups allows to view content by feed (as mentioned this is lacking in Ziki)…but I like that Ziki allows to view content by feed type, and word bursts, and also every Ziki is part of a social community.
I guess Feed Collectors is a Public RSS Reader that comes close to Ziki…although Ziki is more about feed types and people.
Zimbio and GROU.PS are only mildly related as content in these services are both re-syndicated and created within the service.
[ADDED: Soon you will be able to search your Ziki]
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Thanks for your review John.
Just a few comments. We’ve just renamed “Favorites” into “Reading List”, a Ziki is added once (as a global feed) and it’s been merged with Blogroll so all the content you read and recommend is under one same menu. The difference with Network should be clearer. As for searching through your network by tag (and view a tag list for yor network), it will soon be possible. And at a later stage you’ll also be able to tag any Ziki (not just those part of your network).
Regarding the “comments” section, it will also evolve and instead of leaving public comments you’ll also be able to send private messages.
So, we still have a bit of work but we’re getting closer every day:-) We’ve just released the search function for your content. Next step will be to allow you to expand your search to the Zikis part of your Network or to all Zikis. We’ll keep you posted on all new functionalities. Don’t hesitate to keep telling us what you think! Thanks!
Comment by severine — June 27, 2006 @ 9:57 am
Severine,
I really like the idea of Ziki, after reading the IBM article on Fringe Contacts I find Ziki is doing a similar thing for the open web, I really hope you can build a community, as we know with web 2.0 community is king.
Not only can you locate a person by expertise (tags) but you get to see what they are all about by viewing the re-syndicated content in their userspace…and all this content is aggregated into the social community.
So it’s initially about compiling your user space, then secondly finding people by tag, thirdly you can discover content by feed type.
Glad to hear about reciprocate tagging…I wonder if people really know each other that well on the open web like they would in a workplace…anyway this would truly make ziki a people yellow pages decided by the people.
May you could also IM an expert for immediate help, to complement the comments and email channels.
It seems the “favourites” section has gone, and the Reading List section has moved into its place. Actually the favourites is available in a drop down menu in the Reading List section.
So this is blogs a person reads and zikis a person perhaps reads or likes/recommends.
But isn’t the idea of networks already zikis a person likes/recommends…I think networks and your idea of favourites is identical.
Maybe networks should absorb a drop down menu to view content of zikis in your network by feed type.
eg. show me posts from all zikis in my network (not a river of news, but sorted by feed/widget).
Basically do for your network what archives does for your ziki.
Another thought, maybe you could have tags for user feed types, this way you discover not only people by tags, but content by tags…this could be confusing…maybe not.
Not sure if “searches (bookmarks)” is effective, it’s kind of like collecting your favourite ziki (people) tags instead of having to search them all the time…maybe it would seem more usable as a tag cloud for people tags you frequently view.
So network (favourites) are zikis you like, and searches are ziki tags you like.
Maybe searches/bookmarks could have an RSS reader built in so you can be notified of new zikis in that tag…I know each search has a feed, but instead of just bookmarking a search you could also be notified of new zikis in that search without having to do the search all the time…but then again thats what a personal RSS reader is for.
Comment by Johnt — June 28, 2006 @ 6:39 am
Thanks John for your reply and sharing your thoughts and I’m glad you like Ziki:-) A few comments :
- Asking an expert for immediate help: yep, interesting and we’ve thought about it for Ziki Connect / the possibility to ask questions, get answers, get in touch with an expert. Still early stage, but we’re looking into it.
- Regarding the difference between Reading List and Network, the way we see it is that one is to manage your favorite content and the other one to manage your network, your contacts. So you may add for e.g. someone to your network but not to your reading list or vice versa. To help you organize your network, you can tag people you add to it. And for your reading list we’ll extract the tags of the related content (not there yet, but to come). So we feel like it’s preferable to keep network and reading list separate.
- Having tags for user feed types : at the moment we extract the tags of your content and display them as a tag cloud. It is per Ziki and only applies to your personal content but at a later stage we’ll be able to gather all tags together, from all Zikis, so you can also discover content by tag.
- As for bookmarking your searches, it can be quite useful when you combine for e.g. multiple tags and want to save your search instead of having to do it again. Having an RSS reader built in the searches, need to further look into it (currently as you said you can subscribe to a search feed via your rss reader).
Thanks again for your feedback. And see you on Ziki:-)
Comment by severine — June 29, 2006 @ 8:20 pm