Go2IndiaWeb20.com

In my previous blog (read the full story here), I was talking about various Indian blog aggregators and how they were poorly designed. Only one of them was comparable to Blog Aggregator like Digg (though they copied the Digg style and called it Buzz) and Technorati. Here are my thoughts about what features a blog aggregator must provide and how it should be designed.

For those of you who are active in Web2.0 will know that Blog is a concept of Web 2.0. Blog aggregators are, as the name aptly says, aggregates the blogs, that are basically a concept of Web 2.0. Being said that what if the blog aggregators are themselves not Web 2.0. Many of them which I have listed are not collaborative enough they are just aggregating and providing those information, more like Web 1.0. Anyway here is what I would look from a blog aggregator

• provide a way for a user to claim their blog
• user must be in a position to add blogs to their watch list
• user can submit a story (an article, which is not a blog) and provide a way to comment on the story
• users can vote on stories or blogs
• user can see how many votes and who voted to their blog entry or story
• user could share the watch list to other users
• users could create communities and these communities must be based on one or more blogs
• home page must be like Digg
• must have a search which searches for articles and blog entries
• must have a search to search only Blogs
• must have a search to search communities
• must have a search to search people
• Once the community page is opened the front page must list the top stories and or blog entries that are of interest to that community
• users ‘my community’ page must list the top stories and or blogs combined from all the community that the user is part of
• must have a ping service to blogs like Technorati

Okay I just compiled my thoughts together, please let me know what you think.

I have been looking for some blog aggregator exclusively for Indian Blogs. I just want to submit my blogs under the intention to get some recognition in the Indian Blogosphere. I found many of them, and they are not close to Digg or Technorati. I was looking something similar to that. Here is a list of Indian Blog Aggregator that I found so far, it’s worth a try.

• UI is not that great. Simple and Clean, very static in nature.
• Total 83670 blogs are registered
• The front page lists the categories and the Blogs in that category. It would have been nicer if it had a Digg style display in the home page or displaying the top blogs in the Home Page
• Search is really slow

• enewss was far better than this one
• very basic UI
• The front page gives emphasis to on newly added pictures. This over shadows the Blogs that are listed
• No Blog count is provided
• Overall it’s very very basic.

• Finally a site somewhat similar to Digg. Here it’s called “Buzz It!”
• No way to know what Blogs you buzzed

• This is just a List of Blogs based on category.
• Does not display the Blog articles. Just the list of Blogs
• Very basic

Alright here you can either be a paid member or could use it for free. Why on earth you need to have a paid membership for a blog aggregator or for creating communities online. And top of it this is their claim “…WebRing, a pioneer in social networking. Since 1994, our members have created over 40,000 communities visited by three million people a month. What can you do with WebRing..” I seriously doubt that. I don’t want to talk more about this one.. iam getting outraged.

• Indian Blog list by Technorati… blogs that are tagged as India are listed.

• Just a List of Blogs

• Home page has a list of Categories and also tells about the number of blog links in that category
• Poor UI design. When navigating over the menu the page flickers

Iam planning to write another blog about what I would expect in a Blog Aggregator site. Please look for it and provide your thoughts on the same.