Blekko just announced a new social site called ROCKZi. The company is describing it as a “curated social platform that brings communities of likeminded people together to discuss and comment” on news and information.
“Unlike other search sites that force social features to the search interface, blekko has created a new standalone social environment that enables the masses to curate content on the web,” a spokesperson for the company tells WebProNews.
It does, however, utilize “search assets,” the company says, to let users engage with content. In fact, the site will provide social signals to the blekko search engine at some point. The company says it can use the signals to identify the highest quality content, and curate search results, while “pushing spam to the bottom”.
The site has a “news boards” concept for categories like sports, politics, fashion, tech, recipes, etc. Stories are voted up, and whatnot. A familiar concept, for sure. Here’s what it looks like:
“ROCKZi’s great content, its state of the art design, and its very intuitive, low touch set of tools, creates a social platform that brings curation to the masses,” says blekko CEO Rich Skrenta. “Everyone reading content from anywhere in the web can now also be curating it.”
It will be interesting to see what kind of user adoption ROCKZi is able to put together. Blekko says it had 5.5 million unique visitors to its search engine in May. These people made over 110 million searches.