Want to know what I am posting/reading/commenting on across the web? Check out my page on Amplify.
UPDATE: As of today (July 15, 2010), Amplify autoposts to WordPress blogs. So… I have turned off the extra page here on the blog. All Amplify posts will now show both here and on Amplify as regular posts. Enjoy!
What is Amplify?
Amplify is a site where you can share what you are reading on the web, comment on it, and then share those comments to your whole social network. At the same time, you can read what others are checking out and get involved in conversations about those topics as well. Community, connectivity, curation, and content. All in one place.
Why Amplify?
The people I am connecting with over on Amplify are (so far) people I would want to know in real life. They have opinions and want to share them. They like to contribute to each others content and conversation.
It is easy to connect with other users. Find someone whose content you like? Click the follow button. You don’t even have to go to their page – hovering over their name pops up a mini-profile right from what you are reading. Want to connect with others in your social graph? Got to “Settings” (at the top of every page) and click “Find your Friends”. Easy connection to your connections on Twitter, Facebook, and Gmail.
The site is easy to use. It is based on WordPress, so the interface is one you already know. They provide a clipping tool that lets you add parts of the page content that sparked your idea quickly and easily. Click their tool while browsing a page and then click the paragraphs/headlines/objects/etc. that you want to reference in your new piece.
(Tip: Click in the order you want the content to show in your summary – you can’t change the order later.)
The site is customizable. It is easy to make your amplify look the way you want it to look. Custom headers, custom backgrounds, custom colors… All easy to change. They have also provided easy to use widgets that add your content from connected sites to the right side of your page. Want to customize the page even further? You can add your own custom CSS and customize the page look to exactly what you want.
Sharing is great. Amplify has built in a way to share your content automatically with many of the major sites on the social web. I write content there, it is automatically sent out to Twitter – FB – Plurk – Tumblr – Friendfeed. (And you have the option of many other sites as well.)
The team is involved. The people who run Amplify are interested in what the community wants to know about. They comment on content and connect with people all day long. At the same time, they are upgrading the site on a regular basis to add new connections and features.
Ok… What’s not to like?
Like any new site, there are a couple of things that you have to watch out for when using Amplify.
There isn’t a built in spell checker or any easy way to do more than the basic formatting on your new content. If you have a spell checker built into your browser, you can live with the first. The second is harder to get around.
- If you add from the widget at the top of your newsfeed page, there isn’t any formatting or titling automatically added. These are supposed to be short pieces (almost like a tweet), so they are supposed to be self explanatory.
- If you add from the “Write” link, there is the very basic formatting that you get with WordPress. You can do more formatting on pieces added via “Write” via HTML, but only if you know it well. Things added via “Write” can be titled, but the title has to be short enough to be tweeted.
- If you add via a clipping, you get a mix of the two. You can give your items a tweetable title, but you don’t have formatting options or the ability to add HTML.
The other annoyance? No automatic way to post my Amplify posts to this blog. That’s why I had to create the page with the iframe to hold the content. You can add a widget to your blog that shows your recent content, but it isn’t the same thing. Hoping this one gets addressed sooner, rather than later.
One other thing to note:
If you are posting via Amplify to other sites, you will need to be aware of which sites post to each other. You will end up with multiple tweets/Facebook posts if you aren’t careful. I am still working out my strategy for this one. I’ll take ideas.
Final Judgement:
For now, it is a win. I am using it and loving it. I find that I am connecting to people and sharing much quicker than if I feel I have to go write a full piece.
Check it out. Let them know what you think. Talk. Get involved. Get connected. After all, isn’t that part of what life is about?
