Vox, the blogging-meets-social-networking site from Movable Type company Six Apart, has finally opened its doors to the public after several months of invite-only beta testing. I've been using Vox for a few months, albeit very lightly, but I must say that that as social networking and blogging sites go, it feels very stable and streamlined. In addition to all the tools you'd expect in a blogging service, Vox has lots of shiny tools like audio uploads, integration with YouTube and iFilm, Flickr and Photobucket, and Amazon, and an Organizer that makes it easy to manage all the audio, video, and photos you've added to your account. The social networking side of the service is like a more refined version of LiveJournal's, with a Neighborhood page that displays all of your contacts' posts and privacy controls to restrict who can read and comment on a post. It also comes with a ton of professionally-designed themes, and a lot of little touches that don't necessarily blow me away but do make me realize just how much thought was put into each part of the service. Vox is a free, ad-supported service, and I think that now that it's open to the public it's going to grow rapidly.
Tags: blogging, free, livejournal, movable type, MovableType, sixapart, social networking, SocialNetworking, typepad, vox