Back in January, I posted a short update about JapanSoc, the new social bookmarking site and latest project of Nick Ramsey. That was back in January, not long after it had first kicked off. Now it’s been running for over half a year, I thought I’d give it a review – say what I do and don’t like about it and where I’d like it to go in the future.
As far as popularity goes, the site is doing amazingly. Actually, at the time of writing I don’t have anything to do with JapanSoc on this blog, but now it’s really taken off I’m going to do something about that. It’s pretty much essential for people wanting to read blogs about Japan, and for us bloggers to see what other people are writing about. I’ve discovered some really cool sites through JapanSoc, and as the community is relatively small there’s not too much content, so I do read quite a lot of stuff I never would.
Furthermore, the site is nice and clean, and easy to navigate. If I had to be picky, and I do, I’d have to ask why the theme is orange and not red. I mean, Japan’s official colours are red and white, so it doesn’t make sense really. But that’s not really a huge issue. The JapanSoc ‘soc this!’ buttons are really cool but I wish they came in other colours other than orange, or were offered in different sizes and designs. I know you guys are probably wondering why I don’t shut up and make some myself, but the truth is I have absolutely no idea how to. At all.
The new sumo (most successful members) and Genki (most active members) charts are pretty cool, if only to see who’s contributing a lot to the site. It often reminds me that I need to contribute more myself, but I do worry it encourages people to put too much stuff on the site.
That leads me to my one biggest worry about the site. Whilst most of the content that makes it onto the front page is good, I fear some people, especially when the site gets bigger, will simply post every blog post they do onto the site. I’d hate to have a Digg situation with thousands of stories getting submitted and only three or four being interesting. (Although I’ll be submitting this story, and it’s probably not that interesting….) Perhaps a ‘one/two stories per day’ limit would be good.
Ultimately though, it’s a great site. I mean, it had some teething problems but look – I’ve tried to be pretty harsh here and I’ve come up with a few points, and most of them aren’t even very good. I strongly suggest anyone, blogger or not, to get signed up and involved with JapanSoc.
If you have any suggestions or whatever for JapanSoc, comment here with them and I’ll try to get them across to Nick as soon as I can. Oh, and he totally didn’t pay me to write this post. What? This new car? Oh no, I just found it..
