I lost the first version of this post in a Firefox crash while I was writing my post on structured portable social networks (that’s what I get for doing too much at the same time). With a bit of luck it will be better 😉
So, as promised, here’s my feedback to Barney about Lijit. First, for those of you new to Lijit, Stowe Boyd blogged about Lijit about a week ago, which is how I discovered it. (Yes, go sign up now, but come back here to read the rest of the post when you’re done. Thanks!)
Signing up must have gone reasonably smoothly, because I don’t have any screenshots of it — which is a good start. (When I bump into any interface problem or bugginess nowadays, I quickly grab a screenshot with Skitch and upload it to Flickr with a few notes. Photographs of my online life, if you like.)
I was disappointed that I could only add my del.icio.us and MyBlogLog networks. The latter is a good addition, but how about my Twitter network? Or a blogroll on my secondary blog? CTTS doesn’t have a blogroll (pure laziness). I tried importing my network from Facebook, but it was way too creepy, I disabled it as fast as I could. I got the feeling it was going to allow people to search through my friends’ notes and stuff — as well as mine. I do take advantage of the “walled garden” side of Facebook to publish slightly more personal stuff there than “outside”, and I know I’m not alone here.
What would be really neat would be if I were able to export just the connections I have to other people from Facebook, and if they are Lijit users, import their blogs and content into my network. Think portable social networks.
Being able to import the blogs I read (they’re my “network”, aren’t they?) directly from Google Reader (filter with a tag though, so I can keep all those naughty sex blogs I’m keeping track of out of the public eye).
I used Lijit twice to find the old posts I linked back to in the post above. First, on the Lijit website itself:
Then, using the wijit I installed on my blog:
That’s pretty neat. Lijit opens a “fake window” over the current page with the search results, and when I click on a link in the results, it loads in the initial browser window. Sounds obvious, but I like that it works — many ways it could have gone wrong.
I’m moderately happy about the space the wijit takes up on my blog:
I know companies are hungry for screen real estate (“make that logo visible!”) — but be less obtrusive and I’ll love you more! Notice that I now have Lijit search, normal Google search, and WordPress search. Way too many search boxes, but for the moment there isn’t one that seems to do the job well enough to be the only one. (Maybe Lijit, but I haven’t had it long enough…)
Stats page is neat, though I’m still totally unable to tell you what the two pie charts on the right do:
What on earth is Ma.gnolia doing in there?
There, that’s what’s on my mind concerning Lijit for the moment. Watch out for the screenshots if I bump into anything else!
