People powered search engineReviews of anoox.com

I decided to try Anoox as I'm interested in alternative social media systems. I think more people-centric social media is a good thing, and so on a basic level I wish sites like Anoox well. Unfortunately, Anoox is not a very intuitive system: even after logging in one can't really see what's happening in the rest of the network easily or find conversations to look at. I have spent quite a bit of time on the website and have zero clue how active it is or what the user base looks like at all. The feature list is long, but it's hard to see how one gets most of the features into use, and there seems to be a focus on over-the-top advertising of certain features as e.g. "insanely great" when I'd rather have a more limited but robust feature range. The other problems are with the profile, which I've still not filled out. There's no gender option other than male or female (not a problem for me personally but I consider it a negative to have a social network that friends of mine couldn't sign up to). More problematically there are a long list of required fields which do not necessarily apply to everyone - "My Company" for example assumes people a) work and b) work for a single company, which often isn't how things work. I think a people-powered engine needs a better balance between privacy and trust than Anoox offers, and dislike the first name/last name requirements (which also expect a western-norms name structure) and the fact location is a required field. I also cannot see the rationale behind the profile photo being required to be a passport-style face photograph, which feels somewhat privacy invasive. I'd like things like Anoox to be more successful, but to do so I think they'd need to take a less hardline approach on personal data and make getting set up with some of their core features easier. As it is, the site didn't feel very welcoming, friendly or useable for me.

Anoox bills itself as a social network but is highly censorious. In a recent discussion about AI, I made a comment concerning the chilling affect that AI could have on politics. It could make a competent candidate look and sound like a foolish old dotard and make a foolish old dotard look and sound like a competent and desirable candidate. Two others started calling names and had my statement taken down as not on subject. When I asked admin why my comment was not treated evenly, when my attackers were so out of line, Admin banned me for two weeks for insulting Admin itself. No insult was made in my request that they review and correct the lack of an even playing field.

What is there not to LOVE about Anoox! It offers the only non-profit Social network and Search engine. Thus providing the Public a real choice in regard to information and communication and collaboration. And it uses its massive traffic to then provide small businesses lowest cost of Advertising to grow at affordable marketing costs. As if these where not great reasons to love & support Anoox, it is also offering us World-Wide free Video chat! My hat off to these guys.

Anoox is an excellent community for small businesses. Great advertising value!

Bravo ANoox: We been looking for an effective and low cost Advertising venue, because we simply cannot afford the exorbitant cost of Advertising on Google, facebook, etc.. And Anoox advertising has been a business saver for us. So whether you want to join anoox for free as a member or as a small business advertiser, you will be blown away by this non-profit Search engine & Social network