We don't have a solid design for that but we've definitely kicked around the idea. If I want to find the top jotters on NFL, it would be great to see some sort of ranked list.
joshu I love your work and would love to talk to you more about this in general.
There is a disincentive to using a more generic subject and broadcasting out-of-context on Subjot, which is that people unfollow you.
I saw one user doing that in our private beta and I unfollowed him, since the entire premise of Subjot is having a feed of stuff that is interesting. We have a very unfollow friendly culture, so it's not a faux pas to unfollow a subject that you don't find interesting.
It is not a one size fits all solution but it has been working for us. Just like you wish you could unfollow your friend who live tweets the entire episode of Gossip Girls, on Subjot you can easily unfollow specific aspects including a broadcast subject.
i feel like you will have to have aggregate topic categories (everything about topic x) to get enough traffic in that topic. remember that there is typically a 10:1 reader:poster ratio (or more!) and that is what will get spammed.
my gut sense is that if you make topic directories for people to sign up to you are adding transaction costs to get people into the system.
i'm not at all sure what the solution is, though.
on cluedb i made it so that multiple people had to use the same tag on an item before it showed up. cluedb has approximately zero traffic, however.
Definitely. We currently have higher level topic areas here - http://subjot.com/explore#featured but that whole system is still a work in progress.
We have been playing with some ML/NLP type stuff to cluster subjects that are the same. So we can tell if your post about Football is actually NFL or Premiere League... but we're a super small team and its a bit to early to put that stuff into production yet.
It's still early days for us but we're seeing pretty good engagement and retention. Even though people sometimes describe it in terms of Twitter, I actually think its something very different. Subjot is more a discussion and conversation platform and I think its more accurately described as a new kind of forum (its topical and has comments).
So as Subjot's cofounder, I still love Twitter and plan to continue to use it to broadcast my thoughts... particularly ones I'm not looking to have a conversation about.
You can create 250 character jots on Subjot and post them to Twitter and Facebook. There is also a bookmarklet that lets you share to Subjot/Twitter/Facebook from anywhere on the web.
I'm actually not following what Subjot does (can't understand via the text blurb) and I'm not enthusiastic about logging in on any new service via Facebook/Twitter. So I'll wait for now.
Thx. Well, one thing is common here that I too have a lot to say on many topics and one common denominator (either Facebook or Twitter or whatever) is not a suitable choice (hence I use different platforms for different topics but I know its not totally effective).
It's an ideal concept to sort various different interests of a single person interest into separate containers based on target audience. I think Google+ came close but their naming policy sucks. I wish they'd allow different identity/per-Circle, which could help resolve this issue. But in perspective, I should be able to target my audience based on their interest as I know best and vice-versa. Twitter is totally ineffective here to most degree.
I love your comment. I have been studying identity and the internet for years. Subjot doesn't solve the problem of easily posting from different identities but I do promise to respect people's identity and have internet friendly policies.
One of the reasons I created Subjot was because I wanted to share even more. On Twitter if I don't post about tech or nyc tech I lose followers but I have so many more interests than tech. I wanted to post about music, football, street art etc, without spamming people who only care about my posts in tech.
We initially had independent sign up as an option and probably will do that again in the future.
The reason we ditched it, is because Subjot is a network effect product. It's WAY better if you can find some friends already using it, which was far more likely for a user if they signed in with Twitter/FB rather than had the option to do that later in the process.
Subjot is still small and in "private beta" in the true sense of the word (we didn't expect the internet to find us yet) so you may still not have any friends using it but some people do!
I consider my service, Subjot as an MVP but we're just starting to move beyond that. Since branching out on my own, its the first product I've built that I'm moving beyond the MVP.
Why? 68% of all registered users visited Subjot last week. Our total number of users are still small (private beta) but our engagement is very high.
It's in private beta but you can use this code to check it out if you are interested - http://sjot.it/nXM96E
I have a very early stage startup called Subjot, with a goal to create a network that matches people with the posts they care about. We are in private beta but you can use this invite code to check it out - http://sjot.it/m0bqQy
Subjot is a microblogging site where you assign subjects to your status updates. Then instead of following people and EVERYTHING they post, you subscribe to people's subjects and only see their status updates in the subjects you have subscribed to.
I'd love everyone's feedback on the product. I think G+ is only solving the problem of selectively publishing and not of selectively subscribing to updates that might be interesting to you.
You can find it via Explore in the header and then People on the sidebar.