You know what I like best about 9rules? Other than the fact that it’s got a cool website design and many talented bloggers in their niche behind it, they’ve a vision of what a blogging network should be as it grows bigger.
Not long ago, 9rules was only a website filled with the latest articles by authors blogging their niche. Now they’ve evolved further into something most networks normally don’t aim to be because of the generic goal of providing just the best content.
The vision that 9rules believes in:
Our Network has always been based on content and relationships, but the relationships have been hidden behind closed doors. Communities is our way of bringing these relationships out into the public to build stronger bonds and greater resources for readers and our members.
With that, they’ve now introduced a new item on their blog called the 9rules Communities.
Now you can get the best of the topics you like by viewing there. Oh yeah, you also can subscribe to a whole category. That’s neat.
The other extra item I’ve noticed is the Featured section. In there you’ll find articles that have been rated highly by some of the authors (I think that’s how it works) before being posted there.
One thing boggles me though, I’m still trying to figure out how this community is going to grow organically. The community homepage does tell us which category is updated, but it takes us minimum 2 clicks to be able to see what are the new articles available.
I was just thinking if it was done like this, why not do it after you click the Recent tab you just select an option to select a category from the main homepage.
Currently, the only benefit I see of the community page is that it shows a full list of members in the categorya long with the Featured posts.
Maybe I just don’t understand how the community idea works so I’ll just leave it as that till Colin or someone from 9rules comes around. :)
Haha, yeah we’re always around to answer questions ;)
You’re definitely right about the two-clicks thing, that’s a pain. We have a new homepage in the works right now that uses the new infrastructure to present the content, Communities, and Featured blogs in a easily-accessible way. The Communities main page (/browse) will be iterated upon, and you can bet that we’ll be adding links in there that go straight to 1) the latest content from that Community, and 2) the latest Featured blog articles too. Stay tuned ;)
Great hearing from you Mike. I’ll be looking forward to more 9rules development and design changes. Can’t wait to see how the new color scheme will follow closely of the 9rules identity. :)
Bring it on!