Mixx
Encyclopedia
Mixx is a user-driven social media
Social media
The term Social Media refers to the use of web-based and mobile technologies to turn communication into an interactive dialogue. Andreas Kaplan and Michael Haenlein define social media as "a group of Internet-based applications that build on the ideological and technological foundations of Web 2.0,...
web site that serves to help users submit or find content by peers based on interest and location. It combines social networking and bookmarking
Social bookmarking
Social bookmarking is a method for Internet users to organize, store, manage and search for bookmarks of resources online. Unlike file sharing, the resources themselves aren't shared, merely bookmarks that reference them....
with web syndication
Web syndication
Web syndication is a form of syndication in which website material is made available to multiple other sites. Most commonly, web syndication refers to making web feeds available from a site in order to provide other people with a summary or update of the website's recently added content...
, blogging and personalization tools
Personalization
Personalization involves using technology to accommodate the differences between individuals. Once confined mainly to the Web, it is increasingly becoming a factor in education, health care Personalization involves using technology to accommodate the differences between individuals. Once confined...
.
Details
Users of Mixx can control a personalized blend of web contentWeb content
Web content is the textual, visual or aural content that is encountered as part of the user experience on websites. It may include, among other things: text, images, sounds, videos and animations....
that includes text-based articles
Article (publishing)
An article is a written work published in a print or electronic medium. It may be for the purpose of propagating the news, research results, academic analysis or debate.-News articles:...
, image
Image
An image is an artifact, for example a two-dimensional picture, that has a similar appearance to some subject—usually a physical object or a person.-Characteristics:...
s and video
Video
Video is the technology of electronically capturing, recording, processing, storing, transmitting, and reconstructing a sequence of still images representing scenes in motion.- History :...
s. Mixx users can search and discover media relevant to their interests, and interact with friends and other Mixx users who share their common interests.
The content on Mixx comes from various online sources, such as news services and online publishers of media such as video, images, and various other content. Mixx users can submit items from any online source, including their own websites.
Mixx has received partnerships with a growing list of online publishing outlets including CNN.com
CNN
Cable News Network is a U.S. cable news channel founded in 1980 by Ted Turner. Upon its launch, CNN was the first channel to provide 24-hour television news coverage, and the first all-news television channel in the United States...
, USA Today
USA Today
USA Today is a national American daily newspaper published by the Gannett Company. It was founded by Al Neuharth. The newspaper vies with The Wall Street Journal for the position of having the widest circulation of any newspaper in the United States, something it previously held since 2003...
, Reuters
Reuters
Reuters is a news agency headquartered in New York City. Until 2008 the Reuters news agency formed part of a British independent company, Reuters Group plc, which was also a provider of financial market data...
, The Los Angeles Times
Los Angeles Times
The Los Angeles Times is a daily newspaper published in Los Angeles, California, since 1881. It was the second-largest metropolitan newspaper in circulation in the United States in 2008 and the fourth most widely distributed newspaper in the country....
and The Weather Channel
The Weather Channel
The Weather Channel is a US cable and satellite television network since May 2, 1982, that broadcasts weather forecasts and weather-related news, along with entertainment programming related to weather 24 hours a day...
.
Functionality
Mixx lets users generate their own unique mix of web-based mediaNew media
New media is a broad term in media studies that emerged in the latter part of the 20th century. For example, new media holds out a possibility of on-demand access to content any time, anywhere, on any digital device, as well as interactive user feedback, creative participation and community...
by creating their own personalized start page
Start page
A start page is a web page containing useful links or information which appears when a web browser starts. Start pages may include news, weather, games, and other information and web gadgets. Start pages may also aggregate information such as web links and RSS feeds...
. By submitting, commenting on and voting for or against stories, photos and videos that they like or don’t like using a democratic voting method, Mixx users can influence the flow of incoming media and recommend relevant media to other users within specific categories like business, sports and health using either free-form or pre-determined meta tags to define items by subject matter or geography.
Mixx users can also follow other users with whom they share common interests, as well as create, join and invite other Mixx users to private groups to further share and discuss relevant items among peers.
Mixx functionality is primarily divided into three categories:
1. Personalization capabilities
- Start Page. Mixx allows you to specify the categories and topics that interest you. These categories and topics are added to Your Mixx page. Here, all of the items that match your categories or tags are displayed.
- Personal Profile. Mixx users can create their own user Profile, including the ability to choose or upload a photo or image to use as their personal Avatar.
- Customization. While navigating through Mixx, users can customize their Mixx experience by adding a category or topic to their Your Mixx start page.
2. Search and discover capabilities
- Search. The “What are you interested in?” feature lets users enter keywords that they choose to quickly search all of the text or news articles, videos and images on Mixx.
- Navigation. Mixx users navigate through Mixx by category or type of content. Within a category, they can shift focus between Stories, Photos and Videos.
- Popularity. The Popular tab in Mixx displays the items that are most popular among all Mixx users and across all categories for a specific day and time.
- Localization. The Local tab displays content associated with the zip code specified by the user during the registration process. Utilizing the Local Search feature lets users find content for other locations as well.
3. Sharing and networking capabilities
- Submitting content. Users can Submit a Link by entering the URL and content type of the item they want to share with the entire Mixx community or with a Private Group.
- Voting. Mixx allows users to democratically Vote for content that they like or against the content they do not like. Votes are applied within specific categories, meta tags and geographic locations to ensure that no single niche group overruns another.
- Commenting. Mixx users can join the discussion within the Mixx community or within Private Groups by adding a Comment to any item on Mixx. Nested comments and comment following allow for further comment organization and tracking.
- Kudos. Comment management - Users are provided 5 Kudos per day to reward to other users making humorous or intelligent comments resulting in a Big Kudos badge for the best comment of the day.
- Fighting Words. Comment management - Users may mark comments as "Fighting Words" to hide them from the comment stream.
- Private Groups. Users can share and discuss stories, photos and videos among a designated group of friends or colleagues by creating or joining Private Groups. Groups can be made publicly discoverable or remain hidden at the discretion of the Group Administrator.
- Mixx Friends. Users can add Mixx Friends to make it easy to Share, Invite, and View another person’s User Activity on Mixx. Mixx users can also exclude a specific user from viewing their own activity.
History
Mixx was started in 2007 by Recommended Reading, Inc. of McLean, Virginia. The private beta version of the site was launched on September 21, 2007, and the public beta of Mixx was introduced on October 10, 2007.On October 8, 2007 Mixx announced the creation of content partnerships with USA Today, Reuters, The Weather Channel, Kaboose and uclick Comics. On December 12, 2007 Mixx and The Los Angeles Times announced the creation of a content partnership in which the daily newspaper took a minor stake in Mixx. On May 7, 2008 Mixx and CNN.com announced an alliance that added a "Mixx it" icon to the bottom of each CNN.com hosted story. While readers can still share a story to other online social news sites like Digg
Digg
Digg is a social news website. Prior to Digg v4, its cornerstone function consisted of letting people vote stories up or down, called digging and burying, respectively. Digg's popularity prompted the creation of copycat social networking sites with story submission and voting systems...
or Facebook
Facebook
Facebook is a social networking service and website launched in February 2004, operated and privately owned by Facebook, Inc. , Facebook has more than 800 million active users. Users must register before using the site, after which they may create a personal profile, add other users as...
, those options are hidden under the "Share" option, making Mixx a prominent option.
Created and developed by a team of industry veterans with deep Internet, news publishing and online content expertise including several former executives from leading companies including Yahoo!
Yahoo!
Yahoo! Inc. is an American multinational internet corporation headquartered in Sunnyvale, California, United States. The company is perhaps best known for its web portal, search engine , Yahoo! Directory, Yahoo! Mail, Yahoo! News, Yahoo! Groups, Yahoo! Answers, advertising, online mapping ,...
, USA Today
USA Today
USA Today is a national American daily newspaper published by the Gannett Company. It was founded by Al Neuharth. The newspaper vies with The Wall Street Journal for the position of having the widest circulation of any newspaper in the United States, something it previously held since 2003...
and AOL
AOL
AOL Inc. is an American global Internet services and media company. AOL is headquartered at 770 Broadway in New York. Founded in 1983 as Control Video Corporation, it has franchised its services to companies in several nations around the world or set up international versions of its services...
, the company is led by CEO and founder Chris McGill.
The former head of strategy at USA TODAY, McGill previously served as the general manager of Yahoo! News
Yahoo! News
Yahoo! News is an Internet-based news aggregator provided by Yahoo!. It features Top Stories, U.S. National, World, Business, Entertainment, Science, Health, Weather, Most Popular, News Photos, Op/Ed, and Local news....
where he oversaw the transformation of that site into the world’s largest online news outlet. McGill realized that people were becoming increasingly frustrated with surfing a myriad of web sites everyday to find the content that mattered to them. He determined in early 2007 that the time was ripe, and the tools available, to create a site that would make it easier for people with similar interests to discover the best the web has to offer—text, videos and photos. Thus, Mixx was born.
McGill quickly recruited top talent to form an executive team at Mixx that includes Kerry Pearce-Parkins, vice president of products and marketing, and formerly vice president of content at AOL; and Joe Dzikiewicz, Ph.D., Mixx's CTO, who most recently served as a lead engineer and product innovator at AOL where he spent ten years building cutting edge web applications and technologies.
The board of directors and advisors includes Burl Osborne, publisher emeritus of The Dallas Morning News, and former chairman at The Associated Press
Associated Press
The Associated Press is an American news agency. The AP is a cooperative owned by its contributing newspapers, radio and television stations in the United States, which both contribute stories to the AP and use material written by its staff journalists...
; and David Mandelbrot, well-known Internet entrepreneur and the former vice president of Yahoo!'s Content Acquisition Program as well as vice president of Yahoo!’s media and entertainment group where he managed Yahoo!'s Movies, Games, Finance, News, Sports, TV, Health and Yahooligans! properties.
In June 2007, Mixx received initial funding from Intersouth Partners of Durham, North Carolina.
As of 15 April 2011, Mixx.com website announced that Mixx was recently acquired by UberMedia.
UberMedia is an independent developer of applications and web-based services for communication on Twitter and other social media platforms.
UberMedia, initially called TweetUp, was founded in early 2010 by Internet entrepreneur, Bill Gross, in an effort to provide Twitter users with a way to find the world’s best Tweeters on topics of particular interest and at the same time enable Tweeters to increase their following among people keen to hear what they have to say.
Later that year, the company began to bring together under one roof many of the leading Twitter clients or apps in order to provide a platform for innovation in user experiences across the many platforms through which Twitter users send and read Tweets.
Some of the well-known applications, like UberSocial, Echofon, and Twidroyd have been created by UberMedia. Twitter applications for smartphones like BlackBerry, iPhone and Android have also been developed by UberMedia. Twidroyd and UberTwitter are the first apps on the market to deploy LivePreview™ where any embedded link – web pages, blog posts, images and video – are displayed alongside the Tweet.
It seems UberMedia already started on upgrading and improving Mixx. As of October 4, 2011, the Mixx Classic website has been shut down and now only displays a "we'll be back soon message" and a e-mail address collection form which subscribes you to a newsletter that will announce the relaunch of Mixx. As of October 8, 2011, this message still exists. All former Mixxers lost all their saved and indexed data despite being promised otherwise by the Mixx staff. All Mixx user profiles have been deleted. The profile pages return errors, do not even 301 redirect to home, and the site lost significant PageRank and potential rankings. Apparently a total fail.
See also
- BlogBlogA blog is a type of website or part of a website supposed to be updated with new content from time to time. Blogs are usually maintained by an individual with regular entries of commentary, descriptions of events, or other material such as graphics or video. Entries are commonly displayed in...
- Creative CommonsCreative CommonsCreative Commons is a non-profit organization headquartered in Mountain View, California, United States devoted to expanding the range of creative works available for others to build upon legally and to share. The organization has released several copyright-licenses known as Creative Commons...
- DiggDiggDigg is a social news website. Prior to Digg v4, its cornerstone function consisted of letting people vote stories up or down, called digging and burying, respectively. Digg's popularity prompted the creation of copycat social networking sites with story submission and voting systems...
- PersonalizationPersonalizationPersonalization involves using technology to accommodate the differences between individuals. Once confined mainly to the Web, it is increasingly becoming a factor in education, health care Personalization involves using technology to accommodate the differences between individuals. Once confined...
- PropellerPropeller.comPropeller was a social news aggregator operated by AOL-Netscape. It was similar to Digg; users could vote for which stories are to be included on the front page and could comment on them as well. As of October 1, 2010, Propeller will no longer be active....
- RedditRedditreddit is a social news website where the registered users submit content, in the form of either a link or a text "self" post. Other users then vote the submission "up" or "down," which is used to rank the post and determine its position on the site's pages and front page.Reddit was originally...
- Social bookmarkingSocial bookmarkingSocial bookmarking is a method for Internet users to organize, store, manage and search for bookmarks of resources online. Unlike file sharing, the resources themselves aren't shared, merely bookmarks that reference them....
- Social mediaSocial mediaThe term Social Media refers to the use of web-based and mobile technologies to turn communication into an interactive dialogue. Andreas Kaplan and Michael Haenlein define social media as "a group of Internet-based applications that build on the ideological and technological foundations of Web 2.0,...
- Social networking
- Web 2.0Web 2.0The term Web 2.0 is associated with web applications that facilitate participatory information sharing, interoperability, user-centered design, and collaboration on the World Wide Web...
- Web syndicationWeb syndicationWeb syndication is a form of syndication in which website material is made available to multiple other sites. Most commonly, web syndication refers to making web feeds available from a site in order to provide other people with a summary or update of the website's recently added content...