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Need comments on new humorous video tracking site.

Posted: Tue Apr 25, 2006 11:07 pm
by EricS
Tonight, I launched the beta version of a site I've been working on for quite a while.

The site was designed so that visitors can easily keep up with their favorite humorous cartoon and video series that are broadcast online.

It currently only has 4 series cataloged which contains about 538 episodes, but I'm adding new content every day.

Anyway, I've rewritten the site 3 times now and I think I'm ready for a beta test.

If you have a minute, please drop by and let me know either in this thread or via the feedback from on the site, what you think.

Humor Tracker
http://www.humortracker.com

Posted: Wed Apr 26, 2006 3:23 am
by JayBird
Moved to UI Design/Usability

Posted: Wed Apr 26, 2006 9:32 am
by feyd
This smells of "viral marketing." :?

Posted: Wed Apr 26, 2006 9:41 am
by EricS
feyd wrote:This smells of "viral marketing." :?
Well let see.

I do not own any of the series that are currently cataloged. In fact I do not broadcast my own Internet videos or cartoons at all. I'm a programmer. I write web server applications and desktop software for Macs.

All the links that take you to each video are completely devoid of any affiliate links. So I'm not getting paid by content providers.

So I'm really at a loss as to why you would say something like that.

Posted: Wed Apr 26, 2006 9:50 am
by Roja
EricS wrote:
feyd wrote:This smells of "viral marketing." :?
I do not own any of the series that are currently cataloged. In fact I do not broadcast my own Internet videos or cartoons at all. I'm a programmer. I write web server applications and desktop software for Macs.

All the links that take you to each video are completely devoid of any affiliate links. So I'm not getting paid by content providers.
All you've done is argued that (today) your site doesn't earn money, and doesn't generate content.

That doesn't refute the claim that it is marketing. That just refutes that marketing the site (could be) a bad thing.
EricS wrote:So I'm really at a loss as to why you would say something like that.
Considering that your signature refers to marketing, and your www link is a marketing company, I'd say thats a good start. Couple that with generating no content yourself, and a minimal design, and suddenly, it starts to look a bit like a viral marketing campaign for a site that will be used for SEO.

I'm not saying you are doing any of that. I'm explaining why someone would get that impression - and only because you asked.

Posted: Wed Apr 26, 2006 10:26 am
by EricS
Ahh yes. Makes a lot more sense now.

If you actually visit my corporate web site (http://www.omicentral.com), you will see that my company doesn't do marketing consulting. I stopped doing that several years ago when I found out I made more money programming than wasting time trying to keep up marketing stuff too. For the past several years I've been strictly a web development programmer as my day job and Mac desktop programmer in training at night. I'm still in the process of removing any references to marketing and eventually I'll change the name, but that is such a hassle I haven't got around to it yet.

Yea, I agree the site design is rather "minimal". But that is kind of on purpose and kind of not. The whole idea was to allow you to quickly keep track of your favorite Internet cartoons without cluttering up the site interface with a bunch of unnecessary crap. It's also because I'm a lot better a programming than at graphical design.

No the site does not generate it's own content. Again that's really not the point of the site. It's more a quick reference for people who follow a lot of online cartoons. They can go to one place and find out in seconds if there are any new episodes to watch. Rather than visiting each individual site once or even multiple times per day.

I certainly do appreciate constructive criticism and I'm sorry if I get defensive when people offer less than constructive criticism. Simply stating "This smells of viral marketing" doesn't help me make the site any better. Instead, it's more a knee jerk jab at my credibility based solely on assumptions.

Eric

Posted: Wed Apr 26, 2006 4:46 pm
by Charles256
Well spoken Eric.

Posted: Thu Apr 27, 2006 5:33 am
by shiznatix
your sites bad and you should feel bad!

no actually...

I like it. It has the good cartoons there in a nice easy to manuver way. I like the simplicity, the ability to choose what type of format you want to view that cartoon in quickly and easily, and its so straight forward, i love that. I will be using this websites for sure.

cons:
The gray scheme is depressing. this is a cartoon site but the only thing with any color is your screen shots. maybe thing about a tint of red or blue or somtin in that gray to bring it to life some?

Biggest problem I found was your 'Learn More' button. It's not very descriptive about what you are learning more about. also when you goto the site to hear a short description of the series there is a 'learn more' button next to each episode, leaving me to believe that i will be able to get a description of each cartoon in that series, alas i do not. My sugestion is that you change 'learn more' to 'series description' or somthing or like a 'view all of series' or somthing which is much more fitting to the page that it brings you to. I like how it is but take that link out of there when you are viewing all of the series and change the text of it.

also, you do not have my favorite, fat-pie.com on there :P

but, i like the idea a lot, it makes it easier to see when these new cartoons come out without having to visit 10 different sites every day, i like it a lot.

Posted: Thu Apr 27, 2006 4:58 pm
by EricS
Charles256: Thank you.

shiznatix: You are right. The more I look at the site, the more I think that the grey does give it a rather depressed feel. I'm going to paying a friend to redesign the look as soon as his work load lightens up a bit. I think a nice blue would probably be nice for the site.

The "Learn More" button has been a thorn in my side since I created it. I wanted to make a button that would take you to a page that listed the summary of the series at the top followed by all the episodes for that series. But I struggled with the name and I've obviously not gotten it right yet.

When I first created the "Learn More" button, the design for the site was different than it is now. There wasn't a series list on the right side of each page. Now that the series list is on the right side of each page, I'm thinking this button is rather useless now. I'll either find a better name or more likely just remove it since I think it's kind of redundant now.

- Eric