Microsoft’s Geeky MySpace
When the tagline on a website is “127.0.0.1 For IT Pros,” you know it’s for geeks. I signed right up.
Aggreg8 used to be the name of an RSS feed aggregator. The domain was recently sold to Microsoft for $5,000 to use as an IT networking site–sort of like a MySpace for geeks.
I was expecting more. After I signed up and logged in, I could write a short bio describing myself. That’s it. It seems that your online identity is not defined by a page about yourself, as in MySpace. It’s defined only by the posts you make in “Working Groups,” which are basically named blogs open to public posting.
The interface is clunky and unintuitive. The working groups are unmoderated and almost uncategorized (there’s one group called “CloseContacts” that some user created as “A workgroup for those I know.” This group appears under the top-level category “Web”). There appears to be a way to add contacts to your network (like your Friends in MySpace), but I couldn’t figure out how to do it. Some users have avatars, but I couldn’t find the interface to upload one.
In short, I’ll keep my account there for the time being. I’ll check back in after a few months to see if Microsoft has turned Aggreg8 into something actually useful.