This is a follow-up to my last post "Come On Mixx"

That post gave a somewhat negative view on Mixx, which while that needed to come out, does not outweight the good that Mixx brings to the Social Media world. I'm not entirely sure when I joined Mixx, but I would say I joined late 2007. Since then I have been incredibly impressed with what Mixx has done, and have pretty much left Digg almost entirely to focus my attenion on and become part of the Mixx community. I have not given up on Mixx, and I have no intention of doing so, I still love Mixx and would reccommend it to anyone. So while "Come On Mixx" brought up the bad, I want to say why despite the bad, Mixx is still the place to be.

I think what makes Mixx what it is most, is the crew working behind the scenes: Kerry, Joe, Chris, Doug, Will, and everyone else. They legitimately care about what the users think of the site. Instead of just doing what they want and what they think looks or works best, they honestly want to know what WE, the users think and will work things out to make us happy. A perfect example is that right after they released the nested comments update, some users mentioned, and I agree with, that the nested comments stood out more over the parent comments. So what did Mixx do? They changed the look on them and they're now improved upon and not quite as more prevalent over the parent. The whole idea of truly listening to the users is probably what really makes Mixx stand out.

Mixx is also constantly pushing out new updates to the site. From the nested comments, to communities, groups, MixxMail, Kudos to comments, now being able to follow comment conversations, the list goes on. These new updates and abilities enhance the Mixx experience and the Social Media experience entirely. Let's go through a subset of all the things that Mixx has added to the system.

Communities

Mixx has added this community feature to pretty much be a "mini-mixx" where users can form communities and focus on a specific topic. These topics can pretty much be whatever the community admin desires, tech, news, environment, games, you name it. The community page can be customized and you can even set up for ads and be able to make some money off of it. This is what social media is about, sharing stories and discussing them, and communities make that even easier when you can use them to browse through stories of a more specific topic than standard tags and categories can allow. And the best part is of course that these communities use the same engine as Mixx does so they're just as powerful.

MixxMail

Not as new as other features but this feature gives users the ability to talk amongst themselves or in groups in what is pretty much a light e-mail system. If you want to share stories, submissions, thoughts, or just talk about this and that, the MixxMail system provides a great way for you to do so.

Comment Kudos

Now, similar to Digg, but different enough to be in my opinion better is the ability to give kudos to users' comments that are worthy of them. And each user can only give out 5 per day. This prevents for abuse of the system whereas Digg uses the up down votes on comments which are unmonitored and unlimited. This can lead to abuse of the system when something like this happens.

Breaking News

This one was added a while back. Pretty much if a story is what would be considered Breaking News, where its a big story like the Plane Crash in Spain yesterday, or someone famous unfortunately passing away, Supermixxers can mark is as breaking so that it appears on the front page sooner in its own side-section. To combat abuse, Mixx allowed for the need of 2 supermixxers to flag it as breaking before it will become breaking news. This is simply so that the big stories make their presence known sooner.

Your Mixx Page

While this may not seem like much, this is a great way for users to customize the Mixx home page so that they see what they want to see. Users can add tags, categories, subcategories, and users to their Your Mixx page to be given the stories and topics they want to see. The customization here is essential to Social Media...weed out the stuff you don't care too much about and focus on what you do.

There are countless other great things about Mixx but I think even with just this subset, you can see that the good strongly outweighs the bad. The crew behind Mixx are a great bunch and will continue to improve the site to make it better for all of us. I have faith that Mixx will get through this and become the site we all want it to be. I have no intention of leaving the site, because I still think its the best social media site out there. So Kerry, Joe, Doug, Will, Chris and everyone else, keep up the good work, and I apologize again if my last post seemed utterly harsh and/or hurt you, I respect you greatly and am always looking forward to what's new at Mixx.