Muxtape has my attention.
It’s not terribly social. It’s not much of a network.
In fact, it’s so devoid of features, there’s little to distract you from listening to music, which is what you showed up to do.
The front page of the site is dead simple: A colorful list of mixtapes to listen to, with relatively opaque usernames that offer only hints of what might be behind the link.
So, at the start, if no one sent you a link to a particular mix, you’re just free to browse the tapes, listen to anything you want, find one with a familiar band’s name in it somewhere, and you’re off.
Talk about serendipity.
So, because I’m obsessed with thinking about how to present “news” online in unconventional ways that might hold a reader’s interest a little bit longer and keep them around your site long enough to find that enterprise/investigative/database piece you worked so hard at, it occurs to me that this could work for a news site.
Yeah, a news site. What did you think I was going to say?
So, instead of the recommendation-engine driven approach of a Digg or an Amazon or Netflix, or even network-based link firehoses like Delicious, Facebook, or Twitter, this would take a purely serendipitous approach:
A user shows up, adds 10 links to a mix, gives it a clever name, and moves on. No bulky profiles, no following, no activity feeds; just 10 good stories, as if they were a mixtape.
Sounds like a serious timesink to me…
Ryan Sholin 