If you think the new Mashable site rocks, vote ROCKS below or Twitter “@mashable design rocks”

If you think the new Mashable site sucks, vote SUCKS below or Twitter “@mashable design sucks”

So apparently I’ve been dragged, kicking and screaming, back into the editorial department of this humble blog.  First assignment: review the freshly redesigned Mashable.com from an objective perspective, in less than 400 words…

Rocks: Out With the Old

It’s better than the old one.  Mashable’s layout was, up until this facelift, full of fail; a veritable bastion of bloat.  A 3-column design crammed a narrow content column between two pillars of ads, topped by an utterly nonsensical navigation bar.  Load times were laughable: anything between 8 and 12 seconds before the content popped into view.

The new version clearly takes a stab at improving the speed issue: a relatively lightweight design that emphasizes the blog’s core asset: its content.

Sucks: A Touch Too Much?

And yet the homepage, while undoubtedly cleaner than the old one, could be further refined.  Why not standardize image sizes and their alignment?  Why so many font sizes and styles?

Rocks: Tag Pages

These delicious tag pages, for exploring archived content on a certain topic, are carved from slabs of the purest Awesome.  See for yourself: browse stories about Google, YouTube or Facebook.

Rocks: Related Posts

The related posts feature automagically serves up content from the Mashable archives, accompanied by a pretty little thumbnail image. Great for digging deeper into a topic, with a tempting visual prompt.

Sucks: Overshare?

I know every Mashable reader is on a zillion social media sites, but is it overkill to have this many sharing options?  You tell me!

Rocks: Search!

Easy-to-find search box.  Good search results.  Finally!

Rocks: Comment Cleanup

It took a brave soul to venture into Mashable’s previous, haphazardly arranged comments system: glad to see this has improved.  Keep it simple, stupid!  (And they did.)

Ribbon Rocks!  Ribbon Sucks?

Somewhere on the ROCKS / SUCKS borderline lies the “Ribbon,” an expandable content selector along the top of the site.  While extra javascript on a page sometimes feels like extra baggage, I’m finding I love to browse stories in this way.  A somewhat hesitant “Rocks” from me - how about you?

OMG, it’s the Conclusion

The “New Mashable” deftly avoids the fate of New Coke; it’s a return to focus, rather than a bloated feature-fest.  If anything, I long for even less: with html websites becoming one of many outlets for the content they house, there’s little need for added extras. 

And yet, there’s also ample room for innovation: blogs breaking away completely from the template format; re-finding themselves in an era of ever-shorter attention spans and increasingly fragmented media consumption. What would you like to see here? What is the future of the blog format?

Does the New Mashable ROCK or SUCK? ( surveys)

—Related Articles at Mashable - All That’s New on the Web:Mashable Writers UpdateMashable Rocks: Announcing the Winner of Rock BandMashable Relaunches - Like Our New Look?Wordpress DevelopersSubmit News10,000 UsersAuthors at Mashable

Source:Mashable!

When I first saw Koollage, I thought its concept of gathering content you want online and on your iPhone in Pods (Packages-On-Demand) was interesting, but sounded vaguely familiar. Then it hit me - it sounded like Squidoo and its concept of Lenses for content. The other site Koollage reminded me of with its Klubs, Koollage Krew and Kool Factor was MySpace, and its content aggregation properties smacked of a prettier FriendFeed.

The idea behind Koollage is simple. Find content you want to pull together into a Pod, and make that Pod into your personal “podspace.” You can have more than one Pod, which means that Koollage actually has some interesting possibilities as a content aggregator with a different look and feel than something like FriendFeed, and it is already designed for the iPhone in addition to the Web - an improvement over the more vanilla look and feel of FriendFeed for those who find FriendFeed unattractive and difficult to use.

In spite of its similarity to Squidoo (right down to the color scheme and the idea of content widgets), I think the win goes to Koollage for getting to the iPhone first. It won’t be doing much that is different than Squidoo in the online space, but Squidoo has so far lacked a mobile presence, and now will have to catch up to Koollage in the mobile social content sphere.

Koollage has an overall young look and feel, and while the service may not be intentionally marketing their application to the MySpace crowd, that is definitely the vibe I get from it. That isn’t necessarily a bad thing - a young and vibrant look and feel can pull people in to the social content arena that haven’t played in that sandbox before. The ease of adding multi-media to the Pods I think will especially appeal to the glitter-graphic lovers out there.

As with any social application, there is a way to add and track friends on Koollage. This social feature is a must to compete with any of the existing content aggregation sites, Squidoo, FriendFeed or any one of the dozen or so more out there. I like that Koollage has included the ability to socialize but hasn’t made it the focus of their application. The focus of Koollage is the content in the Pods.

Koollage has done something else right as well by offering an easy way to navigate a Pod or series of Pods on the iPhone with the thumb-worthy nav bar. If you are an iPhone user you know that less is more with the touch screen. Koollage lets you move around the Pod using a nav bar like a mini player for the Pod. A very simple concept that will save the mobile user a lot of time.

Koollage has also taken business applications into account. You can have purely fun Pods, or Pods geared toward business, products and making money. Those who use sites like Squidoo as an income stream will love this ability being brought to an iPhone-ready application.

Overall, I don’t see Koollage as having a new application or new idea. Even so, I don’t think that is a bad thing. They have taken our favorite parts of several existing sites and applications (Squidoo, FriendFeed, MySpace), and found a way to merge them into a bright iPhone and iGoogle ready and Web capable application. It isn’t my cup of tea personally, but I think there is a definite market for what they bring to the table.

—Related Articles at Mashable - All That’s New on the Web:World’s Simplest iPhone AppiPhone to Launch in Germany on T-Mobile3G iPhone Confirmed for 2008Mundu Optimizes Multi-Client Chat Tool for the iPhoneApple Making a Directory for iPhone Apps?European iPhone to be Offered on Multiple CarriersiPhone. Europe. September.

We’ve discussed some tactics to get your company better engaged with social media. Lest you think there’s a limit to how you can connect with business and customer facing audiences, we’ve assembled this list of more than 35 companies who are experimenting with social media in a host of different ways.

This list is by no means exhaustive, and it represents a wide variety of businesses, industries and social media tools. As you can see, engagement takes many forms. Some are likely to generate more discussions with the company while others might result better connections between customers. Some will fade away over the next 6-12 months while others will continue to grow and evolve.

There are no rules to what form your engagement has to take. Look at your company, identify its strengths, what types of conversations energize employees and determine how you can best grow/shape/build/join your own community.

If you have other examples of corporate social media engagement, please share them in the comments.

Blendtec is famous for its bevy of inexpensive “Will It Blend” videos posted on YouTube and shared by millions.

Adobe maintains a list of interesting company related websites and conversations on the social bookmarking site Delicious.

Best Western sponsors a blog,“On the Go with Amy,” where the author travels the country writing about her experiences.

Cadence recently relaunched its website that now prominently promotes the company’s community.

Cisco hosts 12 blogs addressing a variety of audiences for their global business.

Coca-Cola Conversations is a blog written by company historian Phil Mooney that focuses on Coke collectibles.

Dell leverages a variety of social media platforms for customer engagement, including an island in the virtual world of Second Life.

Ford publishes news releases with lots of multimedia content and employs a social media news release format to display them in their newsroom.

Fujifilm recently launched a social network to build a community of photo enthusiasts around its newest camera.

GM uses blogs to communicate directly with its customers around topics ranging from design to green tech.

H&R Block created a Facebook fan site to aggregate its social media activities, engage customers and offer tax advice/resources.

HP used Twitter to power a scavenger hunt at a recent conference.

HSBC built the HSBC Business Network to connect entrepreneurs using blogs, videos and forums.

IBM was the first large enterprise to embrace employee blogging and now boasts thousands of blogs related to every facet of its business.

Intel has also developed many social media touch points with its software communities, which includes blogs, Twitter and virtual worlds.

Intuit sponsors the Tax Almanac wiki, where anyone can find and contribute to this resource for tax information.

Jeep connects with customers via a community page with links to photos on Flickr, the company’s MySpace and Facebook pages and a list enthusiast groups.

JetBlue employs social media as part of its training for JetBlue University, as this video explains.

Johnson & Johnson uses this blog to show another side of the company, with frequent video posts and interviews.

Lenovo launched “Voices of the Olympics Games” to aggregate posts from the athletes competing in Beijing.

Marriott CEO Bill Marriott posts regular updates and stories from his travels to Marriott properties around the world to fuel the content for this entertaining blog.

McDonalds maintains a blog to highlight the company’s corporate social responsibility efforts.

National Geographic uses Google’s new virtual world, Lively, to bring people together around its new show, LA Hard Hats.

New York Times is beta testing a Firefox add-on that allows users to share and comment on stories through a decentralized social network.

Nike started a social community on Loopd to connect athletes interested in surfing, BMX bike racing and similar activities with the brand.

SAP sponsored a global survey of social media professionals to learn more about social media worldwide.

Sears partnered with MTV to create a social network around Back to School shopping.

Southwest Airlines employees share their stories and communicate directly with customers through the “Nuts About Southwest” blog.

Sun CEO Jonathan Schwartz’s blog is the example most often cited for what the CEO blog can be.

Starbucks started MyStarbucksIdea so that customers can submit ideas for the company which are then voted on by other users, the best of which will be implemented by the company.

Toyota started its own virtual world to promote its products in Japan (site is in Japanese).

Visa launched The Visa Business Network application on Facebook to connect small business users and to help them promote their businesses to a larger community.

Wells-Fargo blogs target two audiences; one examines the company’s history and the other is for students interested in getting their finances in order.

WWE has a Facebook application, among other social networking tools and widgets, to bring fans closer to the action.

Xerox blogs address several of the company’s core B2B constituencies.

Zappos uses Twitter for employees to communicate with Zappos customers about their shared love of footwear.

[Disclosure: Aaron Uhrmacher works with several Fortune 1000 companies, some of which are included in this list.]

Aaron Uhrmacher is a social media consultant at Text 100 Public Relations. In addition to his posts for Mashable, he blogs at: www.disruptology.com.

—Related Articles at Mashable! - The Social Networking Blog:LinkedIn Launches Corporate BlogSocial Media Marketing FTW!Save the Date for the New Communications Forum 2008Be a Digg Rockstar with Social Media Firefox ExtensionCommunitelligence Executing Social Media Conference in Los Angeles, May 21-22Ticket Giveaway to SMX Social Media in Long Beach, CAWWE Smackdown Gets a Social Network

Source:Mashable!

Google has just launched Knol to the public, dubbed by many as the search giant’s Wikipedia killer. My first reaction: not so fast. While Knol offers a way for anyone to create content about any subject, there are a few big differences.

First and foremost, each “Knol” is created by a single author, who can then choose to either accept or reject edits made by others in what Google is calling “moderated collaboration.” Beyond that, Knol authors can insert AdSense on their Knols and earn revenue based on clicks. In reality, this sound less a lot less like the community collaborating on authoritative articles (Wikipedia) and a lot more like a potential land grab to create content for lucrative keywords.

However, Google does offer some options that should keep would-be opportunists at bay. Each Knol offers the ability for anyone to review or comment on it, which in turn raises or lowers the authority of the article. Google says that they “expect that there will be multiple knolls on the same subject, and we think that is good.”

In giving a single author control over each Knol and its edits, it’s hard to imagine the service will be as authoritative as Wikipedia (which, many would argue has its own biases). It seems more like Squidoo, where knowledgeable people can create good content and be rewarded for it, with the community at-large determining how valuable it is and recognizing that there may be some bias in the article.

Meanwhile, Knol could still be a huge traffic generator for Google and steal visitors from Wikipedia if it’s integrated in search results – something Google has not been shy about doing with other properties like YouTube.

—Related Articles at Mashable! - The Social Networking Blog:The Daily Poll: Is Google Knol a Wikipedia Killer?16 More Years (at least) of Brin, Page, and Schmidt at GoogleThe Daily Poll: Which of Google’s New Products Will Be the Most Successful?Google Knol - More Of The SameThe Daily Poll: Is Yahoo Shine Competing with YPN Publishers?The Daily Poll: What is Google?Google Introduces the ‘Knol’

Porn industry insiders disagree on how they feel about The Pirate Bay. Some would like American authorities to go after the file-sharing site to protect their copyrights. Others are uneasy about the idea of one country’s laws reaching across borders, since many countries aren’t as permissive about adult entertainment as the U.S. [TorrentFreak]

Source:Valleywag

NEW YORK CITY — I’m at the Mixx 2007 online-advertising conference here, marveling at the brazenness of author and entrepreneur Seth Godin. “How do we use this medium in the way it wants to be used?” he asks, as he’s interviewed by Charlie Rose. He’s speaking, of course, about the Web, but he might as well be talking about the medium of the conference stage. And he’s using it to promote his new website, Squidoo. Squidoo, as best as I can tell, is sort of a blog-hosting service like Google’s blogger, sort of a social-bookmarking service like Yahoo’s Del.icio.us, and sort of a hand-compiled search-results aggregator like Mahalo. Godin, of course, doesn’t miss the opportunity to brag to Rose and the audience that Squidoo’s Web traffic is larger than the Wall Street Journal’s, without the benefit of any advertising. Except, of course, the kind of free advertising you get by being a best-selling author and getting invited to speak at conferences.