Jaanix – A Closer Look

I’d like to start by thanking Joe Petviashvili for taking the time to explain his new website a bit deeper with me. To save Joe from having to repeat himself, I’ve decided to post what I have learned about his new website, jaanix, and share with you all what makes this new way of sharing the web superior to so many other sites out there.

Joe explained to me that he is trying to solve a problem that is not currently solved by other social bookmarking or social news sites. His goal is to combine methods currently being used to gather the news we see into one site. He believes that with a mathematical algorithm his site jaanix can be tuned into your needs. The algorithm looks at the levels of various topics you select and compares this with others who have similar tastes, sites they have added, ways they have voted. You may be thinking that this could be the same as checking out what your friends have done on Digg, but it is much deeper than what Digg or other sites currently offer.

Other social sites allow you to like a topic or not. Jaanix allows you to like a topic a little, quite a bit, or anything in between, your choices of topics are only limited by what you choose to submit to jaanix! The first stop when arriving at jaanix is on the right… you will find a variety of topics with sliders, or tuners (this is how you tune the web to your taste!). First thing I did was turned ‘off’ the topics that I have no interest in and turned the topics I like way up! Then, as you go through and vote on submissions and submit items you find yourself, the topics will adjust to fit your tastes, as will the websites shown.

One thing that I certainly want to stress about jaanix is that it is not a cliquish voting site, as I had originally thought. The voting is purely for your own personal benefit. By voting for sites that you genuinely like, or voting down for sites you do not like, you are teaching the site to know what you want to see more of in the future.