Blogs on almost any topic have flooded today’s online world. And still, online users can’t get over wanting for more, for newer contents. So where can you find new contents or blogs on interesting and unique subject matter? And if you are the content creator, how can you get your blog to people who are hungry for new information? With millions of blog sites afloat on the World Wide Web, what boundary or time zone do you have to cross over to get to the other side where people can enjoy your original content, and eventually share it with other people?
There is only one answer to that – FirstQuarto. This was developed by an IIT Delhi graduate, Prasenjit Singh, that allows users to post original content in the form of articles, opinions, commentaries, blog-posts, reviews, etc. and lets fellow users to rate, share and publicize your contents. FirstQuarto provides email and Facebook login to the site. Pass the authentication process and you’re directed to FirstQuarto’s home screen right away.
There are four major sections on FirstQuarto’s home screen, namely Top; Latest; Bistro; and Write.
The “Top” Section
This is where you can find the most popular articles based on ratings and comments by fellow users. You can check the articles for ratings, followers, comments, etc. If you want to read the articles at a later time, one click is all it needs.
The “Latest” Section
This feature is more or less similar to the “Top” section. Clicking “Latest” button will get the system to pull out all the latest articles and their relevant details.
The “Bistro” Section
This is where activities of the community you follow on this network are displayed. Click “Bistro” and you can view all the recent activities sorted by “ratings”, “followers”, and “comments”. Most visited articles appear on top to let you know what the people in your circle have been busy with recently.
The “Write” Section
This section is where the obvious is done – writing your content and posting it in the editor. It’s a comprehensive editor with all the features you need to edit your piece, including posting anonymously. It also has a feature that allows you to tell people you’re not up for any rating for your article. Unchecking the option in the editor will stop the rating activity.
With all four sections on the home screen, you think you have accomplished your mission – to be able to share your new blogs to like-minded people. Not quite. FirstQuarto allows you to link your existing blogs and follow categories based on your declared interests. So, if you are into global warming stuff, you can select the category, read the articles and follow bloggers with same interests as yours.
FirstQuarto also allows users to be flexible with messaging and creating profile where your snapshot, personal details and activities are provided, including all articles posted, rated, categories following, number of followers and following. Individual profiles can be manually updated, or to make things easier, just connect via Facebook and your profile details are fetched from your Facebook account.
The Challenges
Developers of FirstQuarto are focusing on adding more features to the site and building up its user base, which may not be that difficult to achieve considering the different platform it offers to users. The biggest challenge would be avoiding copyrights infringement and plagiarism even as it encourages creating and posting only of original contents. It has a feature called “automated checkers” already incorporated into the system to take care of these concerns. Hopefully, it will be enough safeguard against duplicate or copied contents.
Another challenge would be against Floost, which practically has the same features plus a fantastic design. But FirstQuarto’s networking ability far exceeds Floost and other blogging networks like IndiBlogger and Blogadda. What would be interesting to see are the new features the network will strive to bring in the future to keep its position strong.
