Ex.plode.us, formerly known as Explode! and being part of Elgg, Curverider’s social collaboration platform, has been relaunched last week. It was first launched in February of this year and was often described as a MyBlogLog competitor.
Now with its relaunch Ex.plode.us is describing itself as a social search tool; though essentially it is a people search engine. People can be searched either by interests or by their (real) name. Search includes the following networks:
- Twitter, Jaiku, LiveJournal, Vox, Tribe, YouTube, Flickr, 43 Things, EduSpaces, DeadJournal, GreatestJournal, and of course Ex.plode.us.
Screenshot of search results:
Features
As you can see it’s possible to view the profile pages of users, view their friends and similar users; you can also leave comments on their profiles, their comment wall. Adding users as friends and group them into categories like family, friends, whatever is also possible; it’s called collections in Ex.plode.us.
There are also various widgets available which you can include on your sites, blogs, and social networks. Actually this is where the MyBlogLog comparison is deriving from.
Signing In
The options for signing in are also worth mentioning. Of course, there is the standard username/password combination but you can also sign in with your username from AIM, TypeKey, Vox, WordPress, VeriSign PIP, and LiveJournal; signing in with your OpenID is possible, too. If you are familiar with OpenID you have probably noticed already that the usernames of the mentioned services are OpenID’s as well. So there is really strong support for it by Ex.plode.us.
Summary
I think Ex.plode.us is providing a very remarkable approach to social search. Users can aggregate their contacts and friends in one place and are able to follow their online activities. Though unfortunately Ex.plode.us is not searching big social networks like MySpace, FaceBook, and Bebo so far; hopefully they will be supported soon.
If you want to know more about Ex.plode.us I recommend checking out Molly McDonald’s screencast at DemoGirl.
I think I should mention that I did a little bit of beta testing for Wink’s widget (hey, and I even have a tee now) which is a competitor of Ex.plode.us.
Tags: big social networks, Facebook, Molly McDonald, online activities, search engine, search results, Social Networks, social search tool, social search, Twitter, YouTube
