6 up-votes, so I take even your VP of sales now got the HN account :)
(edit) The page itself - I am trying to like it, but something about it rubs me the wrong way. It might be that it is too personal and overly playful, and people look somewhat unnatural, almost as if they were forced to look having fun. This coupled with sudden image swaps creates the impression of a twitchy teenager trying to look cool rather than a smug bunch of sociable geeks. Also your CEO needs a shave, looks kind of unkempt, and Jeff's photo is of a different scale, so he looks like a person with a small head.
Oh, and the dance mode doesn't appear to be working in FF3 on Windows. Typing "dance" does not do anything.
Not nitpicking, no. He is a head of the company, and his appearance contributes to the overall company's image. Consider what your first impression of a company would be if its CEO were a pierced dude with dreadlocks. Same goes here, "relaxed" and "approachable" is nice for socializing, but in business context it might be less desirable than "reliable" and "organized".
I will take back the unkempt, but I would still insist on Chris needing a shave. Now, back to the downvoting frenzy.
I'd actually feel more comfortable calling these guys on the phone or having a sitdown business lunch with one of them after watching this video. Too many business folks take themselves too seriously.
And Chris looks like he's shaved as close as he can. Didn't come off to me as a five o'clock shadow at all.
It took considerable willpower to not downvote you (though it appears that somebody else already has) -- but really? Making fun of somebody's facial hair?
For the record, they all look a little bit unkempt (except Brendan, who I'm guessing is single ;-)). To most people, that's a job perk -- not having to put on a suit and tie and be perfectly prepared every single day.
I think that can come in handy in a business-to-business situation. For example, if you have two engineers you can either call them each a "Software Developer" or you can have a "VP of Engineering" and a "CTO".
Now when your customer, Huge-Corp(TM), who is going to pay the bills for the next 3 months calls, would you rather tell them "let me put one of our developers on the phone" or "let me put our vice president of engineering on the phone"?
User Agent: Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 8.0; Windows NT 6.1; WOW64; Trident/4.0; SLCC2; .NET CLR 2.0.50727; .NET CLR 3.5.30729; .NET CLR 3.0.30729; Media Center PC 6.0; .NET4.0C; .NET4.0E; InfoPath.3; MS-RTC LM 8)
Timestamp: Thu, 10 Mar 2011 21:39:09 UTC
Thanks for the details. I didn't test dance mode in IE. I thought I'd cut myself some slack since it's just an easter egg. I'll see what I can do though!
Nice page, but you won't be able to read the text on smaller screens. You may want to consider making the height of that huge graphic dynamic (within limits).
I very much doubt that Gregg Gillis will send them a takedown notice. (They are technically violating his copyright since the track is under a non-commercial/attribution Creative Commons license and they seem to violate both those terms. Gregg Gillis, however, doesn’t strike me as the kind of guy who would send out petty takedown notices.)
68 comments
[ 3.4 ms ] story [ 108 ms ] thread(edit) The page itself - I am trying to like it, but something about it rubs me the wrong way. It might be that it is too personal and overly playful, and people look somewhat unnatural, almost as if they were forced to look having fun. This coupled with sudden image swaps creates the impression of a twitchy teenager trying to look cool rather than a smug bunch of sociable geeks. Also your CEO needs a shave, looks kind of unkempt, and Jeff's photo is of a different scale, so he looks like a person with a small head.
Oh, and the dance mode doesn't appear to be working in FF3 on Windows. Typing "dance" does not do anything.
I will take back the unkempt, but I would still insist on Chris needing a shave. Now, back to the downvoting frenzy.
And Chris looks like he's shaved as close as he can. Didn't come off to me as a five o'clock shadow at all.
For the record, they all look a little bit unkempt (except Brendan, who I'm guessing is single ;-)). To most people, that's a job perk -- not having to put on a suit and tie and be perfectly prepared every single day.
Seems odd.
(edit)
Here's my fresh blog post: http://savagethoughts.com/post/3772138359/whats-in-a-name
Now when your customer, Huge-Corp(TM), who is going to pay the bills for the next 3 months calls, would you rather tell them "let me put one of our developers on the phone" or "let me put our vice president of engineering on the phone"?
2 CS, 1 Designer, 3 others. I count three craftsmen.
Webpage error details
User Agent: Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 8.0; Windows NT 6.1; WOW64; Trident/4.0; SLCC2; .NET CLR 2.0.50727; .NET CLR 3.5.30729; .NET CLR 3.0.30729; Media Center PC 6.0; .NET4.0C; .NET4.0E; InfoPath.3; MS-RTC LM 8) Timestamp: Thu, 10 Mar 2011 21:39:09 UTC
Message: 'beats' is null or not an object Line: 303 Char: 9 Code: 0 URI: http://wistia.com/about/team
It's definitely not the "typical SF thing" etc, but to anybody outside California, this feels refreshing.
Great job
A start-up is about creating/doing your own thing, making a living off of it(hopefully profit from it) and most of all having fun!
> Weird how many negative comments you're getting.
That in itself is a feedback too.
Also, the dance thing is just awesome.
Here's something polar opposite: http://carbonmade.com/about
This company arbitrarily decides what copyrights to acknowledge and violate?
So I am supposed to host my video with them, but how will I know they will respect my intellectual property?
If you are a good coder, do creative commons licenses not apply? Is this the tip of the iceberg?
Help me out here.
I'm diggin' the company profile page as well as the team page, nice work!
Who else looked at the source to see what other words you could type in? Only to discover that it's just dance =(
Good for you guys for posting something creative and fun on your site. (No idea why anyone would be critical of this.)
Coincidentally, I opened a Wistia account just last week. Very cool service, keep up the good work.