User Tagging for Twitter – Usermix

I’ve just setup a simple site – it’s very alpha though but I just wanted to get it up and see what people did with it.

http://usermix.vidainnovation.com

You can tag your twitter friends (or any other twitter username you wish actually).

Oh and for the developers out there, there’s an API!

Usermix Developer’s API

Enjoy!

New Vida Website – Content is now in a Tag Cloud

I was thinking the other day how all websites are basically the “same old same old”. They are all “let’s put some navigation up and make sure people know where they’re going” type of thing. The structures are similar and the ideas are similar.

Well, I got bored of my Vida Innovation website about a year ago and just stuck a few things up there and ignored it – and then removed most of the content and turned it into a virtual business card.  It wasn’t core to my business as most of the work my company brings in through through networking both online and offline (mostly offline actually).

So, thinking about the new web 2.0 stuff and how it’s “all about content” and that’s great, I decided to try to think what a website for a company would look like if it’s trying to be innovative and web 2.0-ish.  Basically, all the stuff on a website is content.  If you take it that there are different types of content (photos, blogs, pages etc) then you have a content types.

Once you have content types, how do you arrange them? Well, web 2.0 seems to be all about allowing others to arrange content and tagging is a big thing.  But what if you were to tag all your own website content, so that others could find information out.

Tagging is useful in that respect, so I built a very simple Tag Cloud for my website:

Vida Info Cloud

I built it very quickly and it has an admin backend to CrUD content and tags for that content.  It’s not user-generated tags, but I don’t really care.  The principle is the same as for this wordpress blog, so that people can find content.

The other thing is that the navigation is basically linked to a tag, and not to specific pages. So it’s really really simple to update.

I suppose it’s basically a blogging tool for a company website.  But instead of directing the user, the user is allowed to find their own path.

Told my friend Nigel Crawley and he said that at opentech the Guardian had unveiled their new site structure, all based around tags.

Now, I’m sure it’s not the perfect UX, but who cares?  I like the system so much, that the tag cloud will become my main company site for the foreseeable future, just to see if it produces results.

Your thoughts and comments would be appreciated. Currently, it needs work on design, but I liked the idea so much, I had to get it up on the web.