Loogic English

It seems that internet and the world of wines get along very well. Lately, there are a lot of blogs, online shops and social networks proliferating around this theme.

Vinogusto is one of those social networks about wine, which we talked of when it received a round of investment and now is worth talking about for the good results it is showing.

When i see cases such as the growth achieved by Vinogusto, I start thinking that there are internet entrepreneurs who have a kind of sixth sense and are capable of creating winner projects whatever they do. François Derbaix is one of those entrepreneurs who has made it with TopRural and is now helping this project succeed as an investor and advisor.

It’s worth taking a look at Vinogusto because i believe it’s a very good example of a social network with open content, where the users create value mostly through their comments. 100.000 user opinions in the community, a great example of what Jesus Encinar was describing the other day as businesses based on user opinions.

Another aspect that stands out is its simplicity, which in other words we call Usability, and that is the secret to gaining the involvement of basic users through their active participation in a web they find easy to use.

The mobile version of Tuenti was the theme of the conversation on Tuesday in Seville with the friends of Flowers in Space. It was Bernardo Hernandez himself who talked to us about it and we immediately turned to our mobiles to try it out.

The first thing that draws your attention the moment you enter m.tuenti.com is that it asks you what you are doing at the moment, which means we are talking of microblogging or a Twitter within Tuenti.

If you continue surfing, you see that you have access to your profile, to see your list of contacts and to the messages in your inbox. Clicking on the profile of your contacts, you can see the photos they have uploaded, and as Javi Hernandez puts it, this could be a danger for the productivity in classrooms because of students browsing photos on their mobiles.

Another topic that I find very interesting is the phone list, from which you can access those contacts who have entered their mobile phone number in their profile information, so now there could be people who have their phone list in Tuenti.

I would like to know if, with the launch of the mobile version of Tuenti, there would be an increase in flat-rate contracts for internet connection on the mobile. I have the impression that with time, many young people would want to go for a flat rate to avoid seeing their mobile phone bill shoot up with the use of m.tuenti.com

Ana Belen Ramon, better known as Missha in the world of web design has informed me about the launch (in the “preview release” phase) of Wolpy, a social network for travellers to share their travel experiencies.

Missha is responsible for the design of Wolpy (I love the design, congratulations Missha) and the programming has been done by Miguel Abad.

Having launched in “preview release” for now, Wolpy only allows you to create a map of the places you have visited in your trips and to carry out reviews of the places mentioned. As in all social networks that take pride in themselves, you can share these places with your friends and get to know the places that they have visited.

Once the launch phase is over, the next step would be to allow users to upload photos and videos of their trips besides being able to recommend other users on the places to visit.

The ultimate goal of Wolpy is to become a collaborative travel guide on a global scale.

The staff of Fivelab is announcing the coming-out of Catodicos, the social network for aficionados of televesion series of which we talked when it was released in private beta.

Now Catodicos is open and everyone can participate in this community where basically you can follow your preferred television series and discover new ones.

As I have said previously, I like Catodicos a lot but I think there are some things which can be improved. Here are my recommendations for its creators:

Make the user’s page as the point of entry to the site. This way the user will see the calendar and timetable of his favourite series as soon as he enters the site, and also view other users involved in the community, … This will make the user identify more with the application.

Recommend a series to a friend from the page of the series itself. When you are discovering new series through the list of series, enable the possibility of sending recommendation messages to other members of the community from the page of the series. (This already exists, the people behind Catodicos are involved in everything)

List of series by types. I generally like series that have an argumental thread like 24, lost, heroes, … I don’t quite like series in which each episode is a different story, that’s why I think it would be useful to know the type for each series.

Vote for Catodicos in Loogic Rank.

Read the original article in Spanish.

The news of the day in the blogosphere is the new design of Xataka, and for me, that the commercial blog that is the point of reference in Spanish has incorporated social functionalities like: voting of posts, voting of comments and Karma of Commenters.

As you can see, these social functionalities are centered around the conversation that takes place in the comments section, something that is totally logical in a blog with a high level of comments. The subject of voting the posts, the comments and the karma of the users can open up a lot of possibilities. But I can’t avoid saying that in this case, Weblogs SL has fallen short, because in my opinion the community shouldn’t be just based on the comments but rather the user should be given a more predominant role in the blog. I think that since now each user can have a profile, the next logical step would be to have a community page that hosts the profiles of all users and where the users can communicate amongst themselves through private messages and messages to the community.

Another point to emphasize is the importance being given on OpenID, of course I understand the choosing of this option, but I’m unable to see the utility of this system. Does someone fancy giving me private lessons about OpenID?

And about the new design: very clean, pleasing, easy to read, very well integrated advertising, … I would say that I like it a lot, if it weren’t for the fact that it is aligned to the left of the screen, something that for me is quite annoying. My manias?

For sure, it seems to me an important step ahead for Weblogs SL, again pioneering in the hispanic blogosphere and I suppose, as Julio and Antonio comment, slowly they will go on developing new functionalities to promote the community around their blogs.