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I'm doing some research on Digg for a client project, and during this process I've run across a number of good articles about the site. So I thought I'd share 'em. Good reading if you're interested in learning more about this fascinating and influential site.
My clients often ask me how to effectively communicate with users, especially when there's a problem. Dana has recently written about the communication styles of the MySpace and Friendster founders, and included some useful suggestions.
This morning, I ran across a YouTube blog post explaining the new 10-minute limit.. This is a great example of effective communication: this note lays out the issue clearly and respectfully, and it comes from a real person, who encourages feedback and provides an easy-to-use feedback channel. Nice job, YouTube! Here's the text:
The past few months have been phenomenal for us here at YouTube, thanks to all of you. We've been going through unprecedented growth. Most days it seems we can barely catch our breath trying to keep up with everything, and sometimes I sit at my desk and look around at the 20 or so people around me and cannot believe how far we've come in such a short period of time. No matter how fast we grow or how large we may become, our primary goal is, and will always be, about being in touch with our users and providing them the best online video experience possible. That being said, we've gotten a fair amount of emails lately about the new 10 minute limit we've implemented for video uploads. For those of you not familiar with this change, we've always had a 100MB file limit for uploads. We also recently implemented a 10 minute length limit. This change won't impact the vast majority of our users. We know that over 99% of videos uploaded are already under 10 mins, and we also know that most of our users only watch videos that are under about 3 minutes in length.
So, if most of our users are uploading and watching short form video clips, why even bother to make the change? If it ain't broke, don't fix it right? Well, if you've followed our blog postings or any of the press articles, you know we're constantly trying to balance the rights of copyright owners with the rights of our users. We did some analysis of the videos in our system over 10 minutes in length, and we found the overwhelming majority of them were full length, copyrighted videos from tv shows and movies. However, we also recognize that there are legit content creators out there who may have videos over 10 mins, so we've created a Premium Content Program for those of you with professional-produced videos.
What about the little guys you ask? We hear ya. We know that although most users are uploading short form clips, there are those of you out there that are video bloggers or amateur film makers that have legitimate, user generated content over 10 mins, and obviously, this is not an ideal situation for you. We recognize that, and we're actively working on a solution that will allow for those of you with longer form user generated content, while still preventing copyrighted full length episodes from entering the system. In fact, if you are a user with videos over 10 mins, please contact us. We want to hear from you. We want to know how you've been impacted by this change and any thoughts or ideas you may have.
Remember: this site is about you, and we're listening.
I spent most of last week at the Game Developers Conference. I had a blast - lots of juicy, interesting sessions, impromptu hallways conversations, and catching up with old and new friends. Scott and I gave a well-recieved talk, which was a lot of fun, featuring case studies of MySpace and Brain Age. As always, I love being around game developers -- they're a smart, quirky, creative, fun-to-be-around bunch of people. My tribe :-)
Without a doubt, my favorite event was the keynote by Nintendo Satoru Iwata.
I was thoroughly entertained for an hour, learned a lot, got inspired
to create cool games, and walked out of the room with a FREE copy of
Brain Age (which isn't yet released in the states). What a smart move! All over the show, I saw people playing Brain Age for the next few days. I wonder how many of them will buy a DS just to give the game to their parents?
I'll bet we're about to see a wave of Brain Training games for busy boomers who want to keep their edge. It's a market waiting to happen. We might even see Brain Training labelling systems...
It would be pretty hilarious if games took seriously their role as cognitive food, and, like boxes of cereal, began proclaiming their nutritional value: "This game will stimulate your prefrontal cortex 500 percent more than an episode of Everybody Loves Raymond and 75 percent more than reading The Washington Post!!"
Via Stowe, I ran across these nuggets of wisdom from Jessica Lipnick about making distributed teams work. From the NetAge website:
Boston, May, 2004 - Can absence make a team grow stronger? In 2002, NetAge teamed up with two business school professors to try to find out whether virtual teams really work. Harvard Business Review publishes the results this month as its Best Practice. We found that “far-flung” teams are more productive han their face-to-face counterparts if they keep three practices:
They exploit diversity
The team can't just be diverse; it has to make the most of it. Our teams credit their creative breakthroughs to challenging people from different disciplines, cultures, and the like to come up with something better together. They did.
They use pretty simple technology to simulate reality
By today’s standards, what they use is not very complicated. More than 80% of the teams use teleconference calls and shared websites. More than half used IM even when their companies prohibited it. Only a third used video conferencing. Some banned email.
They hold the team together
It takes a lot of communication. Some leaders spent as much as a third of their time just on the phone with team members.
The article is based on a sample of 54 teams in 26 companies who rarely if ever met as a whole face-to-face
Nice little rant from Stowe Boyd today, including this lovely metaphor:
The Web is not plumbing, pouring bits onto our eyeballs. It is a giant, sprawling, social fabric that we ourselves are weaving, and that we ourselves form. These apps form the the loom that brings the threads together, and helps us collectively become more alive
At GDc this year, I learned about Memegen -- a site where you can create your own quiz, and easily place it on your blog. Memegen is part of the "page extension ecosystem" that has emerged around sites like MySpace, Xanga and LiveJournal. Not surprisingly, the most popular quizzes are about love, sex and gangsta attitude. I'll be curious to see if this site (and others like it) evolve and thrive - for now, it's a fun diversion. When I get a breather, I'll give it a try.
Here's a link to a very useful article that outlines proper use for various internet image formats. A useful reference for anyone who's ever wondered whether to use a GIF or JPG format for posting images to the Net - and wants to know WHY to choose one over the other. I know most of this stuff, but it's VERY useful to have a brief, cogent reminder.
Via Open Gardens, some statistics about SMS revenues. Really makes you stop and think, eh?
Total SMS revenues in 2005 were about 75 Billion USD. To put it in context, Hollywood box office is a bit below 30 B USD. Global music industry revenues are about 35B. Videogaming, consoles and all software are about 40. And the total value of all laptop computers sold in 2005 was about 65 B USD. SMS alone earns more than any of those industries.... And SMS is still over 90% profit. Do we love this industry or what?
Speaking of user-generated content, here's a fascinating development from Europe: SeeMeTV, a mobile channel that consists of short, user-created movies, and rewards popular movies with real money.
SeeMeTV, the first channel that puts mobile users in the director's chair, has continued to grow phenomenally since its launch in October with between one to two million downloads each month.
The channel, which features mini movies recorded by 3 customers via their mobile handsets, has received more than 30,000 clips from aspiring directors keen to share their talent with a potential audience of over 3.2 million...
The most popular and interesting downloads on SeeMeTV to date include:
* Hot dog boy – the quickest frankfurter eater in town!
* Pretzel girl – a real-life office contortionist
* The World's first wedding proposal over video mobile – customer proposed to his girl friend on Valentine’s day (Dating Game)
* Tornado chaos – footage of the aftermath of the tornado that hit Birmingham (24 Hours)3 rewards customers with 1p for every clip that is watched and with a potential audience of millions, who can each view the clip as many times as they like.
At Etech, I met some great people - including Kathy Sierra, a multi-talented ex-game-designer who's now a best-selling author and popular speaker. Her Etech seminar, Creating Passionate Users, got rave reviews from everyone I spoke with who attended. I was bummed that I couldn't make it, due to previous committments.
I've been reading Kathy's blog for a few weeks now, and I'm a full-fledged fan - she's got great insights, and a fun, lively way of communicating her ideas. It was a thrill to meet her, and find out that she's every bit as lively and engaging in person as she is in print. If you're interested in designing fun, accessible user experiences, check out her blog.
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