Assorted Afflatuses

Rarely do I write two blog entries in a single day. But tonight I seem to have the writing bug, so here goes.

MySpace, the wildly successful social-networking website, has one problem that irks me beyond all others. Without considerable skill, time, and dedication, one cannot possibly create a MySpace that looks anything less than decidedly hideous. "Your Fav. Blonde," whose MySpace I selected at random, has a MySpace that looks like this:

(Lime green and hot pink do not go well together.)

Fortunately, however, Six Apart - the same wonderful company who writes the MovableType blogging software I use - recently launched a new service called Vox. Vox provides many of the same features of a MySpace, but without the undesirable hideousness. Users can still befriend one another, contribute to their online journals, swap messages with one another, and extol the virtues of a particular book or band.

But unlike News Corp's MySpace service, Vox provides users with thousands of gorgeous templates that can be applied on a whim as they see fit. As a result, Vox users have some of the best-looking websites on the Internet. Aldrin, a Vox user selected at random, has a Vox that looks like this:

Clearly, Vox users have an advantage in the looks department. Templates come from a variety of sources on Vox - from professional graphic designers to closet creatives - and, for the most part, they all look incredible. Vox also makes choosing and applying templates exceedingly simple. One simply clicks on the design button, finds a design, and clicks apply.

Vox's more polished look also seems to promote better writing. In my limited experience with MySpace, I have never noticed any writing that seemed particularly stellar, or, for that matter, even passable. On Vox, however, all of the writers manage to compose complete sentences and many Vox users write with a fair amount of skill.

Vox users John and Sylvie wrote recently:

MySpace user Girien, on the other hand, recently posted:

That is not to say that nobody on MySpace writes well, but rather to illustrate the generally higher quality of writing on Vox.

Hopefully, Vox will supplant MySpace as the preferred method of online social-networking. It provides many of the same features minus the ugliness. Pay them a visit at Vox.com, especially if you use MySpace.