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Ask HN: Review my site - Shiftpop.com

4 points by inc ↗ HN
Shiftpop is a live video aggregator that's been running as an open beta preview for a while now, we're trying to figure out if people are interested in using something like this, and if it's going to be possible to monetize at some point.

http://shiftpop.com

Any input would be appreciated. Thanks.

2 comments

[ 5.6 ms ] story [ 18.7 ms ] thread
trevelyan
I had trouble figuring out what the site did from the text in your advertisement, possibly because referring to video as "casts" is counter-intuitive to me. It makes me think of the word webcasts, when your examples seem to be video files and movies.

Tried dragging a video into the lower sitecast box which is right beside the video selection menu and it did nothing, although it started playing in both when I dragged it into the upper one. The Say What option didn't work for me, or maybe I just don't know how that stuff works. Clicking in various places there did nothing for me. Someone with more experience with SEO would know if the tag cloud is being useful. I wouldn't try to find video using it.

I wouldn't pay for this, but that's more because I don't think it makes sense to pay intermediaries for online content presumably sourced elsewhere. I do like the design and the drag and drop functionality, although the line-height on the about page needs to be increased to make the text more legible and some of the navigation terminology "Cloud" is puzzling.

rrhyne
Second dropping the 'Casts' terminology. I would go with webcasts or streams. I would use google's keyword suggestion tool and find out what people are using to search for webcasts, then use those terms.

I think you'll loose initial users people who don't get the functionality with the drag and drop.

I like your design, but for the intro tutorial, I'd simplify it greatly, using less graphics. It seems too much like a video I didn't choose, which I was ignoring at first.

Good luck!