I'll try to limit myself to just one short comment :-)
I think Anthony's remark is worth close consideration.
Conventional wisdom regarding del.icio.us holds that you should build a service that is useful to the individual in the absence of others. That way, people will start using it for themselves and the network effect can kick in later. I think everyone understands that the real power and the really interesting stuff happens at the network level - that's where the real value is.
But Anthony's saying something different. He's saying that in the case of something like iTunes, he wouldn't bother favoriting things because there's not enough incentive for him to do so. BUT, he will do it if his information is going out to a wider service - being published, made available to others, etc.
That's very interesting. I think we will see a transition from individuals running individual apps for themselves because they find them individually rewarding towards a general awareness that there are apps you might run, or actions you might want to take, purely for the network effect. That is, people will begin to do things they wouldn't ordinarily do in isolation, because they see the value of the network.
Even more interesting, if the network actually doesn't do ANYTHING except publish their data and make it visible, people can STILL see great value. Twitter is arguably an example of this. Would you twitter if no-one else used twitter? Would you twitter if no-one followed you? Do you talk to yourself walking down the street? Are there things you'll do purely and only because you have an audience? Well, yes, of course! If the network begins to also provide additional services, then there's more (tangible) value. That, I think, is what justifies the valuation placed on something like Twitter - it's about potential energy. It's well worth noting that such a thing can be bootstrapped off nothing more than peoples' desire to broadcast daily trivia, to read others' trivia, to strut their stuff in public.
If the above transition is made more widely, I think we'll have crossed an important threshold in our use of computers. The question "of what use is this to me?" may become "of what use it this to us?" Is willingness to overcome friction due to an awareness of network utility, despite an the absence of personal utility, one of the keys to the forthcoming Web version N.0?
Ethan Bauley
· 2 years ago
Great point, but the fact is that the Hype Machine is still creating huge value for users in isolation [by crawling all those music blogs]. That's pretty important.
Along the same lines, Twitter is more analogous to the "who else has a fax machine" issue.
I think the threshold that we have crossed is that normal people are *expressing themselves* through interactions with software.
Vijay Veerachandran
· 2 years ago
Hypemachine rocks
vincentvw
· 2 years ago
The twitter-hypem link is very cool!
But I use my ratings in iTunes/iPods exactly the same as bookmarks. It's just a way for me to remember not to delete certain tracks of my iPod, and the smart playlists also work great with it. It's also much more relevant to me than the hypem-bookmarks, as I listen to more music on the road than I do behind a PC.
ceonyc
· 2 years ago
I favorite (love) stuff in last.fm so I can listen to my loved tracks later...
Joe Lazarus
· 2 years ago
I'm with Anthony. Give me a little treat and I'm willing to share my interests as favorites or other user generated content (hate that term). In lieu of that carrot, it's not really worth it for me... as selfish as that may be. Getting the incentives right transforms UGC from an activity for 1% of the audience into something mainstream.
My favorite part of favorites on the Hype Machine is the "Love Feed". I favorite artist searches, music blogs, and and other people on the site, and the Love Feed generates a river of new music that matches those interests. That makes me happy.
All in all, a great relaunch for the site. I would like to see the flash player back so that I can easily skip to the next track, but I assume Anthony and his team had a good reason to drop that (legal music rights issues?).
Ethan Bauley
· 2 years ago
Well, they've just "launched," the service is in demand/some scaling issues, Fred is a user...should the countdown to HypeM's appearance on the USV blog begin?
Seriously though, HypeM is in a good spot to leverage the record labels' desire to transition to pure digital promotion. That could be a huge revenue stream w/o legal issues.
Ken Berger
· 2 years ago
It really does literally rock from what I saw of the beta.
I wonder if it's a result of traffic spawned by this post, or from 10,000 browser pages being open (did that really occur?), or both.
Readers: in the quoted section of this post, the 1st para is Fred's words from a prev post, 2nd para is Anthony's response. (didn't seem clear to me)
fredwilson
· 2 years ago
I will fix that ken
Nice catch
Fred
djweej
· 2 years ago
It seems much less functional than the old version. Unless I'm missing something, there's no way to automatically play more than one song (they used to have a flash based xspf player that would allow this). The new UI seems pretty clunky too. Sure the Twitter integration is neat, but really not a big deal. I also don't see favoriting as a big deal if you can't play all of your favorite songs!
I think trying to get 10k users was a bad idea as it set a negative tone between the site operators and the users.
Andrew
· 2 years ago
I completely agree with djweej. I am REALLY missing having a nice little "play these" all over the place. My "hearted", Fred's "hearted", all the songs from a particular blog. I need to be able to loop them with one click.
I want to hear it in the background while I am doing something else so hitting play on each individual song is just does not work for me.
The new look is slicker but a bit distracting IMHO. But I have always been an interface minimalist. (Especially when I am not designing them! Its hard to remove everything from your own important easy to understand interface...)
andrew
MW
· 2 years ago
I agree 100 percent with djweej and andrew. I liked the old Hype much better.
fredwilson
· 2 years ago
I like the new one better but understand everyone's beefs
Its also true that everyone hated the mini feed on facebook when it launched and now its central to the service
UI changes, at least big ones, are always painful for everyone involved
Fred
Fred333
· 2 years ago
Looks like a great new site. I will have to check it out when I get a chance. Thanks for the heads up.
Sid Mohasseb
· 2 years ago
I enjoyed reading your post, I would like to exchange a link. Additionally I would to begin a survey for VC Bloggers on various topics would you be interested to participate?
Eric
· 2 years ago
visually, it looks GREAT. much better flow. the "artwork unavailable" cat photo is a nice touch. can't speak to the usability of the site new vs. old -- that would be the most important thing to analyze -- sorry I can't speak to that.
All Comments
I think Anthony's remark is worth close consideration.
Conventional wisdom regarding del.icio.us holds that you should build a service that is useful to the individual in the absence of others. That way, people will start using it for themselves and the network effect can kick in later. I think everyone understands that the real power and the really interesting stuff happens at the network level - that's where the real value is.
But Anthony's saying something different. He's saying that in the case of something like iTunes, he wouldn't bother favoriting things because there's not enough incentive for him to do so. BUT, he will do it if his information is going out to a wider service - being published, made available to others, etc.
That's very interesting. I think we will see a transition from individuals running individual apps for themselves because they find them individually rewarding towards a general awareness that there are apps you might run, or actions you might want to take, purely for the network effect. That is, people will begin to do things they wouldn't ordinarily do in isolation, because they see the value of the network.
Even more interesting, if the network actually doesn't do ANYTHING except publish their data and make it visible, people can STILL see great value. Twitter is arguably an example of this. Would you twitter if no-one else used twitter? Would you twitter if no-one followed you? Do you talk to yourself walking down the street? Are there things you'll do purely and only because you have an audience? Well, yes, of course! If the network begins to also provide additional services, then there's more (tangible) value. That, I think, is what justifies the valuation placed on something like Twitter - it's about potential energy. It's well worth noting that such a thing can be bootstrapped off nothing more than peoples' desire to broadcast daily trivia, to read others' trivia, to strut their stuff in public.
If the above transition is made more widely, I think we'll have crossed an important threshold in our use of computers. The question "of what use is this to me?" may become "of what use it this to us?" Is willingness to overcome friction due to an awareness of network utility, despite an the absence of personal utility, one of the keys to the forthcoming Web version N.0?
Along the same lines, Twitter is more analogous to the "who else has a fax machine" issue.
I think the threshold that we have crossed is that normal people are *expressing themselves* through interactions with software.
But I use my ratings in iTunes/iPods exactly the same as bookmarks. It's just a way for me to remember not to delete certain tracks of my iPod, and the smart playlists also work great with it. It's also much more relevant to me than the hypem-bookmarks, as I listen to more music on the road than I do behind a PC.
My favorite part of favorites on the Hype Machine is the "Love Feed". I favorite artist searches, music blogs, and and other people on the site, and the Love Feed generates a river of new music that matches those interests. That makes me happy.
All in all, a great relaunch for the site. I would like to see the flash player back so that I can easily skip to the next track, but I assume Anthony and his team had a good reason to drop that (legal music rights issues?).
Seriously though, HypeM is in a good spot to leverage the record labels' desire to transition to pure digital promotion. That could be a huge revenue stream w/o legal issues.
Right now the server is overloaded w/ one of the most hilarious error pages. screenshot: http://kenberger.com/graphics/hypem_error.jpg
I wonder if it's a result of traffic spawned by this post, or from 10,000 browser pages being open (did that really occur?), or both.
Readers: in the quoted section of this post, the 1st para is Fred's words from a prev post, 2nd para is Anthony's response. (didn't seem clear to me)
Nice catch
Fred
Apparently a lot of the old users feel the same way: http://blog.hypem.com/?p=100
I think trying to get 10k users was a bad idea as it set a negative tone between the site operators and the users.
I am REALLY missing having a nice little "play these" all over the place.
My "hearted", Fred's "hearted", all the songs from a particular blog. I need to be able to loop them with one click.
I want to hear it in the background while I am doing something else so hitting play on each individual song is just does not work for me.
The new look is slicker but a bit distracting IMHO. But I have always been an interface minimalist. (Especially when I am not designing them! Its hard to remove everything from your own important easy to understand interface...)
andrew
Its also true that everyone hated the mini feed on facebook when it launched and now its central to the service
UI changes, at least big ones, are always painful for everyone involved
Fred