Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Show HN: I taught myself PHP and built TweetPerView.com

tweetperview.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

41–50 of 56 posts

Re: Show HN: I taught myself PHP and built TweetPerView.com

#41

Post by sinaiman »

shaggyfrog wrote: post #38
sinaiman wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And I might set up a separate Twitter called "ShittyVideos" Haha just kidding, I think this is a cool idea/experiment, it'd be interesting to see what user reactions would be. Initially I would try to have a "dismiss" button just so you can see the ratio of users who tweeted vs. dismissed to see what kind of "annoyance index" you may be looking at here. Edit: ...what kind of "annoyance index" you may be looking at by…

I don't comprehend why anyone would want to experience with seeing just how far they can annoy a user, on purpose. It's like poking some poor caged animal with a sharp stick. Are you annoyed yet? No? How about now... are you annoyed yet?

Sure, you could look at it like that, but this is what marketing is at it's core, really. You run a campaign and you then judge whether it was effective or not. And yeah, when some marketing effort isn't effective, it could be because it was annoying.

But, the bottom line is that marketing a product or service is the process of figuring out what works on real people and a really good way of figuring that out is by actually trying it out with a real audience and recording the results, like a real experiment. You can call it purposely annoying users, but I don't see it that way, and for all we know some people might like the option of tweeting about the video they're about to watch...

Re: Show HN: I taught myself PHP and built TweetPerView.com

#42

Post by jordanlyall »

one-two wrote: post #27

I ain't tweeting shit, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YQtXHp5wXLE

I'm using that public video just as an example. As someone pointed out above, at its current state it's pretty easy to find out the url and watch the video. 1) It's a convenience thing, many of us download music on iTunes even though we can pirate the mp3s. 2) we can't assume the behavior of the average web user based on our own behaviors.

Re: Show HN: I taught myself PHP and built TweetPerView.com

#45

Post by shaggyfrog »

sinaiman wrote: post #41
shaggyfrog wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't comprehend why anyone would want to experience with seeing just how far they can annoy a user, on purpose. It's like poking some poor caged animal with a sharp stick. Are you annoyed yet? No? How about now... are you annoyed yet?

Sure, you could look at it like that, but this is what marketing is at it's core, really. You run a campaign and you then judge whether it was effective or not. And yeah, when some marketing effort isn't effective, it could be because it was annoying. But, the bottom line is that marketing a product or service is the process of figuring out what works on real people and a really good way of figuring that out is by ac…

There's a CBC radio show called the Age of Persuasion that did an excellent show called "Breaking the Contract" [1] on this topic. What is the role of advertising? You are saying is essentially about being annoying; I say, bad advertising is about being annoying, and good advertising gives something back.

The idea of putting up some sort of "Tweet-wall" before I can watch a video and forcing me to tell everyone I'm watching said video is a bit like coercing a review from someone about material they have never seen. Never mind being incredibly annoying, it's also basically asking the user to lie. You can't have an opinion about something about which you know nothing.

And do the Twitter messages coming from this Tweet-wall really add value? To anything or anyone? To the user having to type the message, it's like they're being asked to generate spam for all their followers.

And does that forced Twitter spam actually benefit the video in the long run? Or does it cast a shadowy pall over the video, the video owner, the person forced to tweet, and ultimately, the technology itself?

I'm fascinated at how many in this thread see this as a good idea. I can't even fathom how someone would come to that conclusion.

[1] http://www.cbc.ca/ageofpersuasion/episode/2009/02/14/season-...

Re: Show HN: I taught myself PHP and built TweetPerView.com

#46

Post by sinaiman »

shaggyfrog wrote: post #45
sinaiman wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, you could look at it like that, but this is what marketing is at it's core, really. You run a campaign and you then judge whether it was effective or not. And yeah, when some marketing effort isn't effective, it could be because it was annoying. But, the bottom line is that marketing a product or service is the process of figuring out what works on real people and a really good way of figuring that out is by ac…

There's a CBC radio show called the Age of Persuasion that did an excellent show called "Breaking the Contract" [1] on this topic. What is the role of advertising? You are saying is essentially about being annoying; I say, bad advertising is about being annoying, and good advertising gives something back. The idea of putting up some sort of "Tweet-wall" before I can watch a video and forcing me to tell everyone I'm w…

"I say, bad advertising is about being annoying, and good advertising gives something back."

I totally agree with you here. All I was saying is that it would be interesting to see if this idea would work, that's all. One way to figure that out is by running the experiment and capturing the statistics

Re: Show HN: I taught myself PHP and built TweetPerView.com

#47

Post by jordanlyall »

dools wrote: post #10

The fundamental problem here is that I don't know if I want to tweet about a video before I watch it. A tweet is like an endorsement, especially when you have the extreme burden of more than 10 twitter followers (as I have) - you have a responsibility to your adoring public to ensure you fill your stream with high quality, relevant content. All jest aside, I think it's a great idea to have the ability to tweet during…

I think the bottom line is, if it's something of interest, a tweet is a small price to pay. If it's not worth it, you'll move on. The hope is that the viral growth makes up for the drop-off. We shall see.

Re: Show HN: I taught myself PHP and built TweetPerView.com

#48

Post by docgnome »

jordanlyall wrote: post #47
dools wrote: post #10

The fundamental problem here is that I don't know if I want to tweet about a video before I watch it. A tweet is like an endorsement, especially when you have the extreme burden of more than 10 twitter followers (as I have) - you have a responsibility to your adoring public to ensure you fill your stream with high quality, relevant content. All jest aside, I think it's a great idea to have the ability to tweet during…

I think the bottom line is, if it's something of interest, a tweet is a small price to pay. If it's not worth it, you'll move on. The hope is that the viral growth makes up for the drop-off. We shall see.

But... how do I know it's worth the "price" before I've seen it? Or am I missing something?

Re: Show HN: I taught myself PHP and built TweetPerView.com

#49

Post by podperson »

dools wrote: post #10

The fundamental problem here is that I don't know if I want to tweet about a video before I watch it. A tweet is like an endorsement, especially when you have the extreme burden of more than 10 twitter followers (as I have) - you have a responsibility to your adoring public to ensure you fill your stream with high quality, relevant content. All jest aside, I think it's a great idea to have the ability to tweet during…

I completely agree and would add one more point:

You may get tweeted by doing this but you might not like the tweets. I'd think a better solution would be to let the user tweet part-way or at the end of the video (but of course this may be harder). It's certainly easy to do where you control the player, but that's obviously not the case with YouTube.

Re: Show HN: I taught myself PHP and built TweetPerView.com

#50

Post by jordanlyall »

docgnome wrote: post #48
jordanlyall wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the bottom line is, if it's something of interest, a tweet is a small price to pay. If it's not worth it, you'll move on. The hope is that the viral growth makes up for the drop-off. We shall see.

But... how do I know it's worth the "price" before I've seen it? Or am I missing something?

If it's coming from a source you trust.
Post reply on HN