Vox was an Internetblogging service run by Six Apart.[1] Announced on September 21, 2005 by Six Apart president Mena Trott at the DEMO Fall conference under the codename "Project Comet," the site began private alpha testing in March 2006.[2][3] In June 2006, the site entered public beta—opening registration to outside users on a limited basis via an invitation system—and transitioned to its official name Vox, moving the site to the domain Vox.com.[4][5][6] Vox officially launched on October 26, 2006, with registration opened to the general public.[7][8]
Developed as a Web 2.0-oriented service, Vox emphasized integrated social networking and community interaction features; a simple, clean aesthetic, with an easy-to-use posting system; granular privacy controls for content viewing permissions; and rich media content, including integration with various web services such as Amazon.com, YouTube, Flickr, and Photobucket.[2][7][8][9][10][11] Vox was written in Perl, using the Catalyst framework.[9]
On September 2, 2010, Six Apart announced Vox would close permanently at the end of the month, providing export tools to their TypePad blogging platform and to Flickr. New content could be posted to the service until September 15, 2010.[12] Advertising company VideoEgg acquired Six Apart the same month, naming the combined company SAY Media.[11][13] Vox closed permanently on September 30, 2010 at 3:20 p.m. Pacific Daylight Time.[14]
In 2013, Say Media sold the Vox.com domain to Vox Media, which would become used for Vox Media's news website Vox,[15] which launched in March 2014.
References
^Leslie, Huw (23 October 2006). "Vox: a review of the next big blogging tool". Gizbuzz. Archived from the original on 2 February 2007. The screenshot on the right shows the posting interface. It is a good example of the excellent UI design seen throughout Vox; both highly usable and aesthetically pleasing.
^ abTrott, Mena (22 September 2005). "Mena Trott's Mom". Mena's Corner. Six Apart. Archived from the original on October 4, 2005. We've taken the stuff we've learned from the community features of LiveJournal and mixed them with the publishing features of Movable Type and TypePad. And we've made it extremely media-rich. Adding photos, audio, books and music reviews, etc... is as easy as dragging and dropping files into your posting screen.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: unfit URL (link)
^Sippey, Michael (8 March 2006). "Welcome to Comet!". Archived from the original on 18 June 2006. There have been quite a few "Hello, world!" posts around here lately as we release the Alpha version of (not)Comet. [...] As a reminder, your participation in the private Alpha and Beta test of Comet is confidential. Please, no posts on your public blog, no screenshots, no email conversations with friends, no coffeeshop conversations. For the private test, we're requiring even readers of Comet blogs to be signed in, which means that for now outsiders are, well, outsiders. When we come out of private beta we'll open that up, so that posts you make to share with the world will indeed be shared with the world.
^Acker, Andrew (9 June 2006). "More About Invitations". Archived from the original on 14 June 2006. Vox is still in its early stages of development and very much what we in the industry call a beta service. [...] But certain things can only be tested when real customers (you!) start to use Vox.
^Team Vox (2 June 2006). "You're Invited..." Archived from the original on 14 June 2006. Today we're turning on Vox's invitation feature. [...] every current Vox member will see a new "Invite friends to Vox" button on the Vox home page. [...] You can also invite a fixed number of people to become "Standard" level members of Vox. [...] Right now, we're limiting the number of Standard accounts in order to manage server load and make sure we keep the user experience up to our standards as we add features and functionality.
^Anker, Andrew (31 May 2006). "Getting Closer..." Archived from the original on 14 June 2006. To follow up on Mena's post , we are entering the final 24 hours (or so) until the public release of Comet. Or, as it will soon be known Vox . [...] When we do the transition from Comet to Vox, there will probably be additional down-time, measured in minutes. We don't have an exact time for this conversion but it should be some time before end of Thursday business hours (pacific time). [...] All notcomet.com URLs will be automatically forwarded to vox.com URLs.
^ ab"Blogging Leader Six Apart Launches Vox, the Next Step in Personal Blogging". San Francisco: Six Apart. Market Wire. 26 October 2006. It has powerful privacy control and is easier to use, more accessible, and fun. [...] Rich media integration means members can insert audio, video, photos and web content into posts by connecting with popular web services people already use
^ ab"Happy Vox Launch Day!". 26 October 2006. Archived from the original on 9 November 2006. there was one aspect that really shines: the Vox community. Even though Vox is primarily focused on allowing you to share your life with the people you already know and care about – and, more importantly, care about you -- during the past months of the beta/preview real friendships have developed.
^Tinworth, Adam (8 September 2010). "Lessons from the death of Vox". One Man & His Blog. Retrieved 27 August 2015. It had an ease of use and a simplified posting interface that was unmatched until the arrival of Tumblr – and Tumblr still lacks Vox's superb integration with other sites. [...] Facebook made it much easier to do Vox's "private communication" schtick by reducing the barriers to getting content into it – upload a photo, post a status update, rather than write a post.
^ abLacy, Sarah (3 September 2010). "Six Apart and Vox—How Promise Gets Squandered". TechCrunch. Retrieved 27 August 2015. As blogging was getting more open and commenters more mean spirited, Vox was intended as a clean, well-lit place in the blogosphere. It had a great UI and some nice features like a "Question of the Day" to get reluctant new bloggers up-and-writing. But then it just sort of withered.
^"VideoEgg to Acquire Six Apart and Create SAY Media". SAY Media. BusinessWire. 22 September 2010. Retrieved 27 August 2015. The new entity combines VideoEgg's engagement technologies with Six Apart's social publishing platform to power advertising campaigns that are more conversational and interactive.
^Bhuiyan, Johana (10 March 2014). "'Project X' is baptized 'Vox'". Capital New York. Vox Media purchased the Vox.com domain, once the home of a blogging service, from Say Media in the second half of 2013, vice president of brand development and global marketing at Say Media Michelle Panzer told Capital's Johana Bhuiyan.