Another instant classic from Savage Chickens.

Duration: ~59minutes

In this presentation I cover how to measure success for a start up in a global market (read: the Internet). I tried my best to give an overview of some of the common pitfalls that startup companies seem to face as well as some possible solutions that have worked for me in my career. I tried to have a little fun too.

Notable links for this presentation would be:

• Viddler’s Business Services Web site
• Viddler’s video analytics announcement
• Wufoo for creating surveys

See also some excellent notes from my presentation by Scott Meade.

LessConf was thoroughly enjoyable and I felt privileged to have been part of it. Thanks to everyone in attendance for putting up with me for an hour.

As it stands Safari is far and away the best browser available on the Macintosh. Firefox, which is a really solid browser and is much loved by many developers, just isn’t “Mac enough” for us real, devout Mac users. There are so many things missing when an application is not built as a native Macintosh application. Simple things, really. Being able to look up things from the built-in Mac OS X dictionary is one thing. Native spell check. Speed! These are simple things, since Firefox handles some of these things on its own, but once you’ve grown accustomed how real, native Mac applications feel – you want that from all applications on your Mac. Opera and Camino, both very respectable browsers, just are not as lean and mean as Safari is. The are other browsers, to be sure, but none that are backed by corporations with enough resources, or an active enough development community, to really push for the top-spot on the Mac.

Which is why it’d be great for a really, really good browser to emerge on the Macintosh to rival Safari. Both Safari and the Webkit teams are on a tear lately. They have made tremendous strides towards making Safari better and Webkit (along with Squirelfish which is now called Nitro) much, much faster. They’ve improved Webkit’s page rendering (or, how it displays the page based on open standards) to such a degree that it is the envy of all other engines. But, they could do better.

For example, Chrome renders pages faster than Safari. I don’t need a fancy graph or test to show me this – I’ve loaded pages on my Macbook Pro using Chrome and the speed at which the page becomes usable is hands-down much, much faster in Chrome than in Safari (and Safari is fast).

For example, Firefox has add-ons which enhance the features of the core browser. There are add-ons for everything like plugging into your favorite Web sites, aggregating content, security and privacy enhancements, music, calendaring, etc. etc. etc. All optional, based on your needs/wants. Chrome will also support extensions, which are similar to add-ons, that will use open standards (this excites me very, very much).

Competition. That is what it comes down to. Not just competition based on marketing or market share or even mindshare – but an all-out race to be the best. The unequivocal best even if you’re not the biggest. If Google Chrome for Mac is released and is only marginally better than the developer preview releases I’ve been using – the people that are responsible for making Safari will need to trot a little quicker to keep up with where Google is going.

Hooray for us.

Side note: Why I can’t use Google Chrome full time, yet

I’d be tempted to use the developer preview releases of Google Chrome for Mac full time but there are a few key things that are ultimately missing from the application that are vital to my daily browsing needs. Here they are, in case you’re wondering:

• Adobe Flash support is simply not yet available. I’m not sure what makes Google Chrome for Mac any different than any other browser but I’m hoping this is addressed soon.
• Google Gears support. Both Google Reader and WordPress, two applications that I use quite often, support Gears and make the experience of using them much nicer. Kind of ironic that Google Chrome for Mac still doesn’t have Google Gears support.
• Import from Safari. I could probably hack my way into bringing all of my bookmarks and preferences from Safari into Google Chrome – but I hope that an upcoming release has this built-in.

That’s really about it. If I had these things I could probably make the jump to do some real testing of Google Chrome for Mac. For now, I’ll stick with the best browser available for the Mac, Safari.

Random 60: Dear American Idol, ditch the lip syncing, please. | Favorite on Viddler.

I’m really sick of the group performances on American Idol. Maybe they wouldn’t be so bad if they were live performances done by the contestants – but in fact they are being lip synced. Yesterday I said on Twitter that, while American Idol is a huge success, they need to ditch the lip syncing sessions pronto. People on Facebook agreed.

Lip syncing? During a singing competition? Please, please, get rid of the group performances altogether. It’d make the first few minutes of American Idol watchable.

I’ve seen this reported in a few places, that Sprint is going to spend $100,000,000 on a marketing campaign aimed directly against the iPhone.  Why am I the only one that loves this?

For the first time in nearly a year, Apple is actually going to get some competition.  iPhone knock-offs do not count as competition.  The Instinct, and more specifically this marketing campaign, is something I would consider real competition.  They are using Apple’s own tricks against them (see: the Mac vs. PC marketing campaign).

Some of the points these commercials pick on are related more to AT&T’s EDGE network than the iPhone itself, but that’s ok with me.  The point is, Sprint’s EVDO and GPS features in the Instinct are better than the current iPhone’s EDGE and “location aware” features.  The interface might not be as good, but that is besides the point.

If this campaign forces Apple to move even one-step faster than they would otherwise, or if this makes AT&T and Apple make EDGE faster, the “location aware” features better, or the new iPhone hardware even $1 cheaper than they would have – then I am all for this campaign reaching as many eye balls as possible.

Competition has always been good for the consumer.  As much as I love my Apple products, I want them to have the stiffest competition possible if it means I will end up with even better products than I might have otherwise.

Be sure to go over to Gizmodo and watch the commercials.

Source: Sprint Spending $100 Million to Kick iPhone in the Nuts (iPhone Wearing Cup)

Which leads me to my response to a post by Michael Meiser who has some Ramblings about Viddler’s time based commenting and tagging… among other things. Michael has some really great ideas on how Viddler could improve commenting (he doesn’t really get into rambling about tagging) – but perhaps he’s missed our first step to solving his problem. Michael says:

Viddler’s time based tagging and commenting is interesting but let me know when they get the comments out of flash and use the blog API (blogger.com, moveabletype, wordpress) to post them as “real comments” to your blog post where they belong? where they can be read with the rest of the comments, where they can be tracked with co.mments.com and other trackers, where they can be syndicated with RSS? where I can actually READ them instead of them being in a tiny little 320×240 little window.

The bottom line is there’s two different conversations here. There’s the one in viddler, which is? whatever? can’t follow it. And then there’s the one in the page? which is awesome and useful?. and I can actually read? and which I will actually get responses on because I?m tracking it with co.comments.com.

When I started at Viddler in January of this year, one-month after the site went live, this was my primary complaint about Viddler. The comments were trapped. The conversation was stifled because the UI didn’t lend itself to inline responses. So, we set forth a roadmap to fixing these issues. The first step was improving the timed-commenting interface and creating a way to thread responses. This improved conversations inside the flash-player very much. The second step, which was completed and launched during our last major version upgrade, was to pull the conversations out of the flash player and onto the page to make them much more readable.

Michael’s suggestions fall on the heels of his watching Chris Messina‘s excellent rant about Mozilla. A video that has received a great deal of attention and with that – a good deal of conversation has been had on the timeline. Some 26 comments have occurred on the timeline, mottling up the interface a bit (something that Viddler is always striving to improve upon). Looking at the main video page for Chris’ video it becomes very easy to follow the conversation happening on the timeline.* So in a way, we’ve already taken steps to improve the ability to follow conversations.

Let’s say, however, that Chris wanted to keep his conversation completely on his site so that he could keep track of it much more easily. All he’d have to do is adjust the options for his video to turn off comments on his video and post the video to his weblog. Or, if Chris wanted only timed comments, he could have easily turned off comments on his blog post and pointed everyone to Viddler for commenting. But Chris chose to allow both, knowingly or unknowingly I don’t know.

Michael also remarks that he’d like comments to be “…syndicated with RSS?…”. This, again, was one of the first things we took care of in our latest revision of the system. Every single video has a feed for subscribing to comments (just like most weblogs do). Simply append /feed/ to the end of any video URL. For example, to subscribe to the comments Chris’ Mozilla rant, you’d use this url. The feed will not only syndicate the comments made on the video, but also will link you to the moment in time the comment was made. Perhaps we do not have enough of a visual indicator for these feeds (since we only broadcast their availability via “feed detection” enabled browsers). If this is the complaint I’m sure we could update the site to make the existence of these feeds much more apparent.

So what is the next step regarding Michael’s ramblings? Will Viddler start using the MetaWeblogAPI to post comments made on the timeline onto the user’s blogs? I am not sure that is the clear cut answer. I think the interface for that could get a little crazy and most people’s weblog designs wouldn’t really work to link back to the moments in time that these comments happened (but that doesn’t mean that Michael’s thoughts on this haven’t gotten my brain’s wheels spinning and I hope to address this in greater detail with the Viddler team in the near future). In the meantime though, perhaps improving the way some of the options are worded, or perhaps some more tips are in order? Maybe explaining to the content producers that if they’d like to keep their conversations in one place, that the best way to do that is to either turn commenting off on Viddler or on their blog. Either would work. Lets not lose sight of the fact that Viddler is doing something very new with timed-comments – and that it will take some time before all of the dust settles and the right solutions for these problems become very clear. Remember when Trackbacks started mottling up Comments? Now every blog has trackback support, but each of them “shows them differently”, but yet most of the time they work for what they are. Viddler is taking steps to allow trackbacks, perhaps the trackback API would be the next evolutionary step to keeping conversations in one place? We’ll see.

Ok, enough about that – lets address Michael’s next rambling:

One last thought on viddler. While the interface is interesting there’s a lot more to a company than a cool flash interface? look at blip.tv. My fav video blog host. The key to blip’s success thus far is serving the core videoblogging community? which unlike youtube.. wants to have their own domain? their own blog, the ability to monetize? to OWN their own content and have control over it? to not have it deleted or removed because of some arbitrary DMCA notice. Anyway? none of that has to do with a slick interface. It has to do with strategy and architecutre and business direction. Then again.. blip could REALLY stand to have a slick viddler flash interface? maybe the two should partner? of course maybe viddler sees blip as competition. They shouldn’t, but maybe they do.

Lots to chew on here. I’ve been asked several times what I think of “our competition”. I’ve had entire conversations on how so-and-so is “doing this” and why doesn’t Viddler “do that”. This “Us vs. Them” type of attitude (UVTA) can very trapping. In every company I’ve ever been apart of, the UTVA has always been omnipresent. Some have used it in inspirational ways while most of been trapped by it.

When I worked for a securities trading firm it was Us vs. Ameritrade. Constant comparisons between how much Ameritrade “paid per account” and our method of gaining accounts. When I moved onto a sports memorabilia agency it was always Us vs. The Bigger Company. Comparing athlete contracts, etc. Then came 9rules where comparisons between Us and other weblog networks would constantly be drawn. Other weblog networks would even begin to debate the idea of whether or not 9rules should even be considered a weblog network. Talk about worthless chatter. In every case described above there has been some level of balance and imbalance. In one case it may have been one executive of the company that would get completely trapped by the UVTA, while another executive would swoop in and rescue the other. I’ve even seen entire teams get sucked into this line of thinking and begin to lose focus on what they wanted to accomplish. That is the trap.

The point is – the UVTA can be used to either help your company progress or could end up trapping your company from making any progress on its goals because you get sidetracked. Each product is typically built to solve a problem or set of problems. When that focus is lost by trying to keep up competing products, everyone suffers. Especially the original goals set out by the founders of the company/product. The balance of paying attention to your competition and remaining on a course to complete your own goals is very difficult to strike. A moving target sometimes. But not impossible.

After over five-months with Viddler I think they do an incredible job at this balancing act. Does Viddler consider other video sharing sites competition? Perhaps competition for your attention, but not necessarily from a feature or business perspective. Are other video sharing sites doing some things that Viddler should be doing? Absolutely. But here is why comparisons are completely unfair and should never be harped upon too much. Viddler has only been live since December 2006. There are several sites that have been around much longer, have a larger team, and great resources. I’ve never heard these reasons used by the Viddler team as an excuse, or a crutch, to under-perform. But these facts remain.

In other words; Any comparisons drawn between Viddler and any other service will be taken seriously from the standpoint of trying to improve Viddler’s platform. Playing catchup is nearly impossible and Viddler doesn’t consider itself behind the 8-ball. We’ve got our roadmap. Rob Sandie is quite possibly the best product manager I’ve ever met and he’s only 24. Did I mention the service has only been around for 6 months? Go take a look at Viddler again. Dive deep. Six months.

To Michael, thank you very much for jotting down your ramblings. They definitely got me thinking about the next step for Viddler in trying to both revolutionize commenting on the timeline of video – and trying to create seamless conversation. But comparing two services this early on in development is really unfair and getting stuck in that attitude would do more harm than good. The Viddler team is dedicated to helping our Viddlers have the best possible experience using the product envisioned by its founders – and that will continue to be our mantra.

* Most of the “comments” on Chris’ video was him using the comments feature as a way to inject URLs into the timeline of the movie. This is something we are working to fix in a future version of the player that would give the producer of the video the ability to add clickable URLs on the timeline which would, in a way, remove the need to “hack the system” in such a way.