Gizmo Review
Reddit or Digg are among the websites I visit from time to time to catch up on Internet chatter. Both sites share photos, videos, memes, comments, opinions and links to articles that pique the interest of their users or editors.
Those sites and others tackle the formidable challenge of distilling the immense volume of material flowing through the Internet down to a collection of items that are both current and popular. One of the primary tools in that process is reader opinion. If you like what you’ve seen or read, you express that opinion by clicking a thumb up icon or something similar. The more positive sentiment that an item attracts, the more prominent and visible it becomes on the site.
Now those digital discussion boards have new competition from a site called Jivr that has added a new twist to the reader sentiment system. Jivr bases its display formula on the number of votes that a post has received in the past 10 minutes. That means the items that get the most prominent placement are the ones that are hot right now, not ones that collected a ton of votes last month.
Jivr uses a very simple and unadorned display with posts sorted into topics and the major topics shown in the header area of each page. They include News, Politics, Animals, Photos and NSFW (not safe for work). There is also a quick link to see what’s trending.
Users can several hashtag terms to their posts. A photo I found of a pitfall balancing a ball on his nose carried more than 20 tags from #pitbullnation and #dogsofinstagram to #showmeyourpits. Readers can use the hashtags to follow related discussions and use a voting button to give a post their blessing.
Because Jivr is new, it has far less content that discussion sites that have been in operation for several years. I found several active conversations in the Politics section, which I expected, but nothing posted in NSFW, which was a bit of a surprise.
I also found that the Jivr server can be slow to respond and sometimes my browser would time out without returning any data at all. I chalked that up to the usual growing pains experienced by many new sites. When I did connect, I was rewarded with new content that I had not seen on a previous visit, which tells me that Jivr is starting to catch on.
To check share your own pearls of wisdom and gems from the web, visit the Jivr website where you can create a new account or log in with credentials from Twitter, Instagram or Tumblr.
Those sites and others tackle the formidable challenge of distilling the immense volume of material flowing through the Internet down to a collection of items that are both current and popular. One of the primary tools in that process is reader opinion. If you like what you’ve seen or read, you express that opinion by clicking a thumb up icon or something similar. The more positive sentiment that an item attracts, the more prominent and visible it becomes on the site.
Jivr uses a very simple and unadorned display with posts sorted into topics and the major topics shown in the header area of each page. They include News, Politics, Animals, Photos and NSFW (not safe for work). There is also a quick link to see what’s trending.
Users can several hashtag terms to their posts. A photo I found of a pitfall balancing a ball on his nose carried more than 20 tags from #pitbullnation and #dogsofinstagram to #showmeyourpits. Readers can use the hashtags to follow related discussions and use a voting button to give a post their blessing.
Because Jivr is new, it has far less content that discussion sites that have been in operation for several years. I found several active conversations in the Politics section, which I expected, but nothing posted in NSFW, which was a bit of a surprise.
I also found that the Jivr server can be slow to respond and sometimes my browser would time out without returning any data at all. I chalked that up to the usual growing pains experienced by many new sites. When I did connect, I was rewarded with new content that I had not seen on a previous visit, which tells me that Jivr is starting to catch on.
To check share your own pearls of wisdom and gems from the web, visit the Jivr website where you can create a new account or log in with credentials from Twitter, Instagram or Tumblr.
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Written by Ric Manning
Follow me on Twitter @ricmanning and read my technology columns at My Well Being.
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