I'm so excited today. MyPlick has been covered by Mashable!, one of the best and biggest blogging sites that cover social networking news. You can see the blog entry here.
I was just going through the motions of monitoring our server log today, and found a user called Kristen Nicole signed up. Well, nothing unusual, just the name sounded real familiar. Anyway, I didn't think too much of it. Little did I know traffic started coming in. And a lot of it, at once! I was ecstatic. Thank you Mashable, and thank you Kristen :)
Wednesday, August 29, 2007
Tuesday, August 14, 2007
What if everyone votes?
Answer: we'll have a better president, but let's leave that to another day.
One of the most important things we want to accomplish with our site is to present the most interesting and relevant contents to our users right before their eyes. The less effort required to find the contents they want, the better. To that end, we designed our home page so that it mainly consists of a hot plicks list that is constantly updated based on user activities on our site. Of course, this is nothing new. Sites such as Digg and Reddit have been doing this for ages in the news reporting area.
But we want to do better. One of the problems we have found on sites such as Digg is the concentration of subjects that make the top page. Posts about Apple, iPhone, Ubuntu, Linux, Firefox, and Microsoft sucks make up a big portion of the top stories. This happens because only 5-10% of all the viewers are actively digging contents and thus the top stories will mostly reflect their tastes. Now what if everyone votes? Wouldn't the contents that come out of it be a lot more diverse and useful for the average viewers? We certainly think so.
That's why we have recently started to anonymously gather information while a user is viewing a plick. For example, we would know which slides a user viewed and how long he spent on each of those slides, and much much more. Of course, we never associate that information with a particular user, but given an aggregate view, we can get a pretty accurate picture on whether people liked a plick even if they don't do anything else. So instead of the usual 5% of users, all 100% of our users are constantly helping us to make our site better.
One of the most important things we want to accomplish with our site is to present the most interesting and relevant contents to our users right before their eyes. The less effort required to find the contents they want, the better. To that end, we designed our home page so that it mainly consists of a hot plicks list that is constantly updated based on user activities on our site. Of course, this is nothing new. Sites such as Digg and Reddit have been doing this for ages in the news reporting area.
But we want to do better. One of the problems we have found on sites such as Digg is the concentration of subjects that make the top page. Posts about Apple, iPhone, Ubuntu, Linux, Firefox, and Microsoft sucks make up a big portion of the top stories. This happens because only 5-10% of all the viewers are actively digging contents and thus the top stories will mostly reflect their tastes. Now what if everyone votes? Wouldn't the contents that come out of it be a lot more diverse and useful for the average viewers? We certainly think so.
That's why we have recently started to anonymously gather information while a user is viewing a plick. For example, we would know which slides a user viewed and how long he spent on each of those slides, and much much more. Of course, we never associate that information with a particular user, but given an aggregate view, we can get a pretty accurate picture on whether people liked a plick even if they don't do anything else. So instead of the usual 5% of users, all 100% of our users are constantly helping us to make our site better.
Monday, August 13, 2007
Private beta has been amazing
Since June 25th when we launched our private beta, we have been getting tremendous support from our private beta users. You guys really rock!! All the bugs that were found, all the features that were requested, and all the feedbacks that you gave (including the negative "what were you guys thinking, I'm never coming back if you don't revert" ones :) have really helped myplick become a better site. Thank you so much.
On top of the leader board is lynnshi, who has so far uploaded 175 plicks, far out-distancing himself from everyone else. To show our appreciation for his support, we have offered to embed one of his favorite plicks below: "Lynn's China Trip 2006"
On top of the leader board is lynnshi, who has so far uploaded 175 plicks, far out-distancing himself from everyone else. To show our appreciation for his support, we have offered to embed one of his favorite plicks below: "Lynn's China Trip 2006"
Myplick has a new home!
Two months have passed since myplick's initial alpha launch, I finally decided to temporarily drop all the fun programming I have been doing and start writing up a blog. Hopefully, this will become a place where we can communicate with our users, gather a lot of feedbacks and improve myplick to serve you better.
My name is Lei Jin. Along with Eric Xu, we are the two founders for http://www.myplick.com/ Since we are still in private beta stage with invitation-only sign up, I will briefly describe what our site does.
We are a site that allows people to share multimedia presentations and slideshows online. Unlike other photo/slide sharing sites like slide.com or photobucket, we allow you to upload your slides in PowerPoint, PDF, and a variety of other file formats. We then take care of converting your uploaded file into a plick that's optimized for viewing experience.
By now, you might be wondering what a plick is. Why did we pick this name? Plick is a play on the word flick, where p stands for presentation. Our goal is to make online presentation and slideshow viewing as fun as a flick. That's why we picked this name. Besides, you know how difficult it is to find a web site name that's short and easy to remember :)
Now, since we are about sharing multimedia presentations, we also allow you to upload an audio file to go along with your slides. People can hear music or your narration when viewing slides. You can even synchronize the slides and audio together using our synchronization tool. It's really fun and easy. I encourage everyone to try it out.
Ok, enough of me talking. Eric has made this nice plick that I have embedded below. It's called The top ten reasons to plick. Have fun.
My name is Lei Jin. Along with Eric Xu, we are the two founders for http://www.myplick.com/ Since we are still in private beta stage with invitation-only sign up, I will briefly describe what our site does.
We are a site that allows people to share multimedia presentations and slideshows online. Unlike other photo/slide sharing sites like slide.com or photobucket, we allow you to upload your slides in PowerPoint, PDF, and a variety of other file formats. We then take care of converting your uploaded file into a plick that's optimized for viewing experience.
By now, you might be wondering what a plick is. Why did we pick this name? Plick is a play on the word flick, where p stands for presentation. Our goal is to make online presentation and slideshow viewing as fun as a flick. That's why we picked this name. Besides, you know how difficult it is to find a web site name that's short and easy to remember :)
Now, since we are about sharing multimedia presentations, we also allow you to upload an audio file to go along with your slides. People can hear music or your narration when viewing slides. You can even synchronize the slides and audio together using our synchronization tool. It's really fun and easy. I encourage everyone to try it out.
Ok, enough of me talking. Eric has made this nice plick that I have embedded below. It's called The top ten reasons to plick. Have fun.
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