Lists are useful much of the time for people who come to discover them from a variety of angles. For instance, there are list poems, to-do lists, who's who lists and then, of course, lists that proliferate on social media and the Internet, Twitter lists or lists of top ten films and the like, for instance.
But now, here's a site that is leveraging the idea of lists and is built around lists allowing for user interaction and participation as well. Welcome to an interesting website venture called Intralist!
Intralist's catch line is "Discover, create and share what matters to you". Its creator is John Jaxheimer, former creative director at Sports Illustrated. More than just being a site that allows people to get lists of the top ten books or movies or songs, etc., a facility many sites already provide in an albeit random manner, Jaxheimer and his co-founders Stuart Schwartz and Alex Ressi sees Intralist as a site that is organised in such a way that 'consumers can effectively compare things", Techcrunch reports.
Thinking of lists and comparisons, one is reminded of the Indian venture polkacafe.com which feeds readers with a continuous stream of all sorts of lists from trendy shoes to food items that go well with Scotch whisky. And flipkart.com where it's easy somewhat to compare products you might want to buy. To shift from web to print, there is too the graphically fabulous book Listomania, which has over 1200 fun facts organised by lists.
So what's different about Intralist? Jaxheimer and colleagues believe that lists are a great format for comparisons, their unique selling proposition being that users can participate in these conversations using lists.
"Publishers have been creating list content for decades, but these days everybody is a content creator," Jaxheimer said. "Why limit it to a one-way dialogue from publisher to consumer?"
According to Intralist, anyone can create a top five list. There's a limit of five entries, so compile your list carefully and, yes, you can contribute a fresh list or even take an existing one and create your own version. Intralist, Techcrunch points out, comes in and helps you find relevant images and links as you build your list.
Intralist also enables an aggregation of lists around a given topic and creates what might be deemed a "definitive" Intralist. That is, you can see individual lists of, say, the best burgers in New York City, or click on the red "i" icon and see the aggregated results, Techcrunch notes.
Intralist wants to work with other editorial teams and publishers. The idea is that if a list appears on Intralist, it is like the icing on the cake. The Intralist post becomes a preview of a longer list that might exist on another website.
"I'm very aware of the sensitivities that content providers have around their content and also the amount of time they put into creating that content," Jaxheimer added. Rather than scraping publisher content, he said his aim is to "work with them to drive users back to their sites more effectively," according to Techcrunch.
Intralist is currently available as a responsive website that works on mobile, with plans to launch a mobile app early next, Techcrunch added. Try it out, it might be fun in more ways than one.
