A first look at Zimbio: “The People’s Guide to the Web.”

 

I have been offered the privilege of testing and publicly previewing Zimbio (formerly Zoozio), a new company and service that will be shipping a public beta soon. Before I really dive into details, I’d like to mention how impressed I am with the progression of the web. I’ve been keeping a keen eye on new innovations for the past few years.  Each time I check out something new, I find new services and concepts are being implemented on top and beside each other, sometimes redefining old concepts, sometimes creating new ones, but each time I dive in I am finding services are driving (or mashing) the bar a little bit higher, and certainly Zimbio is no exception.

 

This preview is divided into two sections: a Q&A with the founders/creators and a first glance at Zimbio. Let’s check out the service first and then have a talk with the founders.

 

Rght now Zimbio works with IE and Firefox, with Safari Support in progress. If you would like to know what value Zimbio adds, think about it like an About.com meets Wikipedia.org, although there are services baked into the service which can be found in many other places on the Web as well as a few new concepts. We’ve seen Wikipedia become THE encyclopedia, Digg rival Slashdot, and so if there is one emerging theme to the future of the web it’s the people who power it.

 

In a nutshell Zimbio is a service which enables public portals, which are basically information guides to help members quickly lower the learning curve on any topic. If things turn out as expected, I would expect Zimbio to become the first base for research when it is in the scanning phase of R&D, as well as a very useful site for people to quickly become familiar with any given subject.

 

From Zimbio.com:

We’re a collaborative media company, and our mission is to help people learn from others on the Internet. Our network of public portals are designed to help people quickly get down the learning curve on any topic of interest by seeing what other people are reading, saying, and recommending about the topic.

 

I think that’s an impressive mission which deserves diving into and exploring.

 

At first glance you see the service’s frontpage. Which is an index of categories. Here, you will find a wide variety of subjects. From Sports & Recreation to Politics and Current Events to Entertainment and what index would be complete without Technology & Computers–there is something of interest for everyone, and hopefully everyone is a guru at something and can contribute at some point.

 

 

It’s important to note that Zimbio does not aim to be an encyclopedia, rather a portal containing links, pictures, feeds from blogs on the subject, search macros, forum discussion, live chat, and a group blog on the subject at each portal. 

 

Anyone can simply browse or search through the growing mountain of information but a user must first create an account and profile before being able to comment, add links, or create a new portal.

 

Inside each portal are various nuggets of info about the portal’s subject. There are many useful panes which can be dragged around and organized depending on how the guru wants the layout to look. A nice AJAX interface is complemented by a smooth clean design.

 

 

So far, I am really impressed with the service. As of this posting, there are only a few contributers (Small Private Beta), but a wealth of information. When the service launches (soon) the service will be transformed into a really great and very useful resource on the web, which I think will rival and eventually outdo destinations like About.com. It’s all about the power of the people!!

 

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Questions and Answers with Tony Mamone & Danny Khatib–the Company’s founders.

 

Q: Hello, I was wondering if you could telll me more on the history of this service, and what made you think of creating it.

 

A: Our Inspiration: It’s still a pretty difficult thing to quickly learn about a general topic on the web, and it’s even harder to piggyback off the experience and knowledge of other people who’ve already taken the time to get informed about a topic. Most people who want to learn about a subject just start pounding a few different keywords into a searchbox, sequently click through the results, and hope to find something relevant. Sometimes that’s a very pleasant experience. Other times it’s a time consuming and impersonal experience. We’d personally like to use a service that makes it easy to browse the knowledge and energy of other people. And we hope others would, too.

 

Our History: Tony and I co-founded the company in late summer (05), and our small team has been building the service since the fall. We’ve literally just begun private demo testing. So we’re a young company.

 

Q: What are you planning on doing with spam/splogs? Hopefully your site won’t merit a new type of spam word! (Sportal?)

 

A: Spam is something we think about a lot. We plan to build in several defenses over time, since this will require permanent, ongoing attention. For now, here is our first line of defense:

• We do not accept anonymous contributions (a major source of comment spam). You must be a registered member to add a link or a comment
• Any member can delete another comment or link (the primary wikipedia model of defense)
• We track all submissions by member, so we can more easily identify when a member is considered a "spammer" and track all the activities of that member.
• We can manually block usernames and email addresses from posting content.

Q: One major difference between Wikipedia and Zimbio is the concept of a Guru. A Guru is the "owner" so to speak of the content on each portal that he/she is the guru. What happens when a guru loses interest in being guru, does that affect the quality of that portal, and are there rules fleshed out for losing your "guru job?" Thanks again and I look forward to enjoying and contributing to your new service!

 

A: For many folks, interest in a specific subject waxes and wains. While we’d like to think that gurus will always remain passionately involved with their portals, we know that some folks will move on to other subjects. Part of the magic of Zimbio is that any member can contribute content to a portal, not just the original guru, and over time active contributors can be promoted to guru status for a specific portal. We expect there to be multiple gurus for each portal over time, many of whom did not actually create the portal. So this will hopefully allow our community to avoid the absent landlord problem.