coRank Features Tour
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coRank is a site where, among other things, you get
news and web pages depending on what other people think
of them. Now...how is that different from other sites?
Let's do a quick 15 slides walkthrough...
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| Wisdom of crowds |
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Some sites can feed news to you, based
on what other people think.
One of such sites, and the most popular by far is
Digg.
coRank can do this for you, but that's not really why someone would use coRank. And that's a good thing because these other sites do a darn good job about it, and have the huge crowd that make them work. |
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| Selected Wisdom |
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In coRank you select those whose opinion matters to you,
and then
your front page will receive news and websites
when the "most" of your selected "sources" said they
liked them or found them interesting.
So, if you're familiar with sites like Digg, you could think of coRank as something that works very much like these sites, but as if the only votes that count are from people you select. |
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| Friends are Friends |
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Now, some of these other sites also allow you to
make "friends", and then, anytime they vote or submit a story,
you get to know about it. Reciprocally, when you vote or submit
a story, they get to learn about that too.
Well, coRank can do this for you too if you like, but this is not the same as what we said in the previous slide... Why? |
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| Filtering is the key |
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Well, if you look at the two pictures, they're not the same.
To "make" friends and receive the news and websites they
submit or vote (left image) is quite different than
establishing a news filter based on the votes
of people you've previously selected (right image).
And although coRank allows you to use the method described in the left image, it is the one described in the right the one that is unique to coRank. coRank also attempts to solve yet another problem... |
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| Democratic Expertise |
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Most services that rely on other people to decide what's
cool or interesting take the assumption that everyone's an
expert on everything (sort of), and while sometimes that
has some advantages, it is not always the case.
For example, I could have friends or sources who really know about tech stuff, but I hate their taste on music or videos... What if we could single out all of these folks based on topics or areas where I believe their knowledge would serve me better?
That's exactly what coRank can also do for you.
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| Like-minded users |
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Now, this isn't something really novel, but what if you'd like to know
what other users are showing similar interests
to yours? Under your account's Network tab, click on "Like-minded".
coRank will show you a list of the top 50 users whose actions on the site match yours best - that includes voting, commenting, submitting, and so on.
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| Following up made easy |
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Your Front Page doesn't only give you news tailored the way you want.
There's an Alerts section where you're notified when someone replies to
your comments, adds you as a source, etc.
And if that's not enough, on the right column you can also see the stories you last voted, or where you last posted a comment, so following up the conversation is right there for you.
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| Looks matter |
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"Skinning" a site is easy nowadays. That's why in coRank
you can choose from several "themes" or templates, so you can change the looks
of coRank however you like it.
Besides the default, five completely unoriginal themes are provided today. Some better ones should come soon, and we're even thinking to let you design and apply your unique theme, and maybe even share it with others.
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| Why copy & paste URLs when you can click |
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Submitting stories and web pages to coRank needs to be easy, and
for now coRank covers the basics by offering a
Firefox extension and bookmarklets to help you submit
whatever you like to coRank with just a click.
You can also add a widget to your blog with the latest 10 stories promoted to your front page, or easily add a "coRank this!" button to your blog posts if you like. No, we don't have spy or swarm tools. They're really cool but coRank is more about content than about watching things happen. At least for now. You 're the boss!
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| Threaded comments |
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This is a no-brainer, but for the record, yes you can
post comments on the submitted stories, using a fully threaded
model. And like everything
else in coRank, the comments page will use whatever "theme" you
selected.
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| Sometimes yes (or no) is not enough |
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Two other simple but useful features. First, stories can be
of interest to you or not, so you can
vote them up or down. You also know how it all balances,
and who did what.
Second, if you disagree with someone, should you just "thumb" his or her comment down? We think that some of the best conversations are between people who disagree. Why break that?
And no, we didn't add these features "to be different", but because we like them this way better.
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| Top users? We're cool with that |
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coRank is driven by you. If you use coRank and are a good sport, you deserve
that recognition. So yes, we have a top users list, based on what you
should expect (quality submissions, votes, etc) and a few more things.
And although there's a "global" ranking, we give preference to the "Montlhy Ranking" - that is, who are the top users on any given month. So the first of each month, we're all equal :-)
Now, this ranking - monthly or global - doesn't give you more power when it comes to voting or submitting stories. Also remember, in coRank you get stories based on what your sources do. If the best top user ever is not one of your sources, what he submits or votes has no effect on what you'll get on your Front Page. And if one of your sources "misbehaves", then dump them and problem solved.
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| You're in control, the easy way |
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Your settings page is as simple as it gets - three things you can tune up -
yet it gives you full control
on your coRank experience. Here it is:
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| And a whole lot more... |
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We've kept you busy long enough. So, besides everything we've
shown you already... What else does coRank offer?
We should highlight:
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| Final blurb |
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coRank is a site mainly inspired by Digg and del.icio.us, and
it shares many of the features these services offer. If those two
sites had never existed, I doubt I'd ever come up with coRank.
And while those two services are really great, with coRank I tried to create a service more suitable for what I would have wanted they had. To me (RBA), the best thing about coRank, more than anything else, is that it doesn't need tons of users to acquire "wisdom". If I manage to have some of the people I know whose opinion I value joining coRank and use it, it will work for me. If you like the concept and manage to do the same, hopefully it'll work for you. It's been three crazy months developing this thing, and now that coRank is out, there's even more work to do: finish some pending features, some bug fixes here and there, get some more people on board (we don't need funding, thanks for asking :-), adding hardware if demand goes up (the architecture has been designed to scale well, but a couple of servers won't get us far)... As for yourself, well, how about signing up? ;-)
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