Some weeks ago, I was invited to submit blog posts to Linkadelic magazine, a website that is part of a venture called CoMagz.

CoMagz is a tool that lets online communities compile content (whoa, accidental alliteration!) (whoa whoa, happened again!)

. . . collaboratively. (Sorry, but I really did need that word there. No helping it. But I’m done now.)

Members submit articles or links. Other members vote on them, and the articles that get the most votes get pushed to the front page.

It will be interesting to see how this works out. It’s a fairly new venture, and I assume the payback, for the CoMagz backers, is ad revenues, which means it has to attract a goodly amount of traffic.

Coincidentally, I happened across this piece in Slate by Paul Boutin, “A Grand Unified Theory of YouTube and MySpace.” Boutin notes that Youtube traffic is on par with that of cnn.com (!) and then discusses how they’ve managed that:

There are two design requirements for technology meant for the masses. First, you need to automate all the techie parts so people can just press Play. To watch television online, I shouldn’t have to install extra video software, figure out my bandwidth setting (100K? 300K?), and sign up for an account with the player’s maker. Second, Web moguls shouldn’t presume to foresee what 100 million people will want to do with their site. I’m one of many who stopped using Google’s Orkut social network because its hardwired page designs made everyone look like they were there to find a date and/or a job.

You give people a virtual communal space that’s easy to manipulate and completely flexible. CoMagz isn’t like that, it’s more structured. OTOH, it’s a nice way to push your blog posts out for more exposure.

So we’ll see. But in any case, it’s fun to be part of the experiment :)