SocialOnTheWeb

Well, it has been awhile since I blogged about jaanix, and I am also ashamed to say that I have not frequented the site quite so much, either. So, although my original intentions were to talk about another site or two I had checked out recently, I thought I should at least check back in with Joe at jaanix and see how he has been doing.

I have to tell you, I am quite impressed! The site seems to have grown massively beyond the young teen boy crowd! There is now a lot more geeky interest for people like me, who are fascinated by the social web!

I find it very interesting that the typical pages found on a website (about, FAQ, blog, and privacy) are not set up as you would find them in a different website, but each 'subject' is entered as a topic within the jaanix system. It is really rather clever, once you grow used to the site.

They have also minimized the tuner and have posted a teaser showing that you will soon be able to look at the web tuned by different individuals on the site.   This could be interesting! 

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I'd like to start by thanking Joe Petviashvili for taking the time to explain his new website a bit deeper with me. To save Joe from having to repeat himself, I've decided to post what I have learned about his new website, jaanix, and share with you all what makes this new way of sharing the web superior to so many other sites out there.

Joe explained to me that he is trying to solve a problem that is not currently solved by other social bookmarking or social news sites. His goal is to combine methods currently being used to gather the news we see into one site. He believes that with a mathematical algorithm his site jaanix can be tuned into your needs. The algorithm looks at the levels of various topics you select and compares this with others who have similar tastes, sites they have added, ways they have voted. You may be thinking that this could be the same as checking out what your friends have done on Digg, but it is much deeper than what Digg or other sites currently offer.

Other social sites allow you to like a topic or not. Jaanix allows you to like a topic a little, quite a bit, or anything in between, your choices of topics are only limited by what you choose to submit to jaanix! The first stop when arriving at jaanix is on the right... you will find a variety of topics with sliders, or tuners (this is how you tune the web to your taste!). First thing I did was turned 'off' the topics that I have no interest in and turned the topics I like way up! Then, as you go through and vote on submissions and submit items you find yourself, the topics will adjust to fit your tastes, as will the websites shown.

One thing that I certainly want to stress about jaanix is that it is not a cliquish voting site, as I had originally thought. The voting is purely for your own personal benefit. By voting for sites that you genuinely like, or voting down for sites you do not like, you are teaching the site to know what you want to see more of in the future.

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Am I really doing this is the first thing going through my mind... Well, yes I suppose I am. As with everything I do in life, I do want to be fair. It seems my post from yesterday annoyed Mr. P. a bit, because I incorrectly called his new site, jaanix, a voting site. Yes, although you do vote for different sites here, that is not the point of the site. The point of the site is to "tune your view of the world".

I have now played with this site for about the past hour and I'm sorry, I still don't get it. Here is the list of topics that you can slide to get more or less of a subject: humor, jaanix, xkcd, social, search, design, google, del.icio.us, weird, youtube, photography, web, blog, math, development, internet, webcomic, comic, tools, language, science, funny, rss, code, news, web2.0, and video. I hope I am not the only one who sees the recurring theme here, but I won't even hold that against the site and will jump head first into the Google category - that shouldn't be hard, right?

Along with being able to slide among the different topics listed, you can also click on any topic, again, I am choosing Google. The first item I am seeing this morning, ironically, is a submission I have recently made. It does have to do with Google, so far so good.

Click on the image to see the full sized screen capture. The first three items, as well as item number six could all fall under the topic "Google". In fact, one is even tagged Yahoo, but as Yahoo and Google are in competition, I will give that the benefit of the doubt and not discount that item. The fourth item on this page is tagged cheerleading, wrestling, and soccer. The fifth item is tagged math, funny, and comic. I do not see where either of these fit in with Google.

I honestly had no intentions of saying anything negative about this site. I just wanted to go back and give it another chance, because Mr. P. seemed to feel that I did not look closely enough at his site. After looking closer at this site, I would not call it a voting site and I most certainly correct myself for saying that it was such a site. I have seen other sites refer to jaanix as a social bookmarking site. I can mostly agree with this description, but I'd like to add that it appears to be a social bookmarking site targeted for teenage boys. Seems that they really like humor and comics here at jaanix. My step son should really enjoy this site!

So that no one is limited to just my opinion on this site, I'd like to offer the following links of other views on jaanix:

• Social Bookmarking with a Twist
• Jaanix.com - Tune the Web
• Jaanix feature - Push to Twitter
• Jaanix is Pandora + Del.icio.us
• Jaanix: A Cool New Microblogging Tool

As you can see by visiting the links above, it seems that my dislike of jaanix is not a popular view. Joe, I sincerely hope you do not take it personal that one woman in her mid 30s does not like your site!

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