Vox is Closing

Publishing and social networking platform Vox has recently announced that the service is closing soon.

Vox has been a fun place to explore, create and connect with your friends. But Vox is closing its doors on September 30, 2010.

This doesn’t mean you have to say goodbye to your blog. We want you to make sure you can keep the great content you’ve shared on Vox, and continue to have a home for your blog. To help you make the transition off of Vox, we’ve added new export features that make it easy to move your blog to a free TypePad account, and your photos & videos to Flickr.

I’m not a big fan of Vox, but I setup an account when it first opened. I also have a few friends and online contacts who use Vox (or used to) as their primary publishing platform. The main come-on of Vox is that it allowed users to publish content they stored in other services under a single point of access, which is their Vox page.

I’m not sure about Six Apart’s main reasons for closing down Vox. Perhaps it’s because there are a handful of services that offer just the same functionality, but with a bigger user base and perhaps better profitability.

What does this mean for people who use small services, then?

I used to work for a company that developed a similar service like Vox. Back then, it was also in my mind how the service can compete and thrive, in the face of the established services. However, it’s not always the case that newer, smaller services will fail. It takes two things to succeed (or at least survive): a thriving community, and a really good product.

Take for instance services or products that started out small, like Facebook, Wordpress and Twitter. Perhaps at one time they were just another product with a small community. But once you reach the tipping point and everyone starts talking about your product, and using it, and building on it, you’re assured of success.

But then, it’s up to you how to stay at the top. How many products or services do you know became obsolete because they didn’t change with the times? Or how many services or products became too successful for their own good, and just fizzled out through time, leading to their demise?

I guess the question here is how you can get people to commit. I must admit I used to be an early adopter. When there was some new online service, I’d be among the first to join. But getting people to join up and keeping them active are two different things altogether.

And for users who sign up for services, the question is this: how sure are you that the service you are using will still be there one, two years from now? If they promise to keep your files or photos forever, how sure are you that they will keep true to their promise? It’s a pain having to lose your “home” online and move elsewhere.