When people send me stuff I give it the “BlinkTest.” Named after Malcolm Gladwell’s “Blink” book.
What is my impression after the first 10 seconds? Especially in comparison to something I already know about. It’s those first few seconds that really count. It’s why I like WetPaint and PBWiki (I tried about five others and the first 10 second experience sucked in comparison to these two wiki tools).
Here, let’s try with “HelloWorld,” a new service that lets you post your video up to the Web for free. Open your browser. Visit HelloWorld. Look around. Have a friend time you and only give you 10 seconds. Close your browser. Do the same with YouTube.
Now, what are your opinions? For me I saw a lot of things that looked like ads on Hello World. I didn’t see any on YouTube.
On YouTube I saw examples of videos done by real people. On Helloworld I didn’t see any examples that demonstrated to me that there was a community there.
For me the new Web is about technology COMBINED with community. Heck, even the old Web was about that. Ebay. Craigslist. Today Digg.
On YouTube I saw a simple statement of purpose. I even remember it without looking “Broadcast yourself.” What about HelloWorld? I can’t remember one. I do remember seeing stock quotes on HelloWorld. Huh? If I want stock quotes I’ll go to Quicken or Yahoo Finance. They don’t belong on a video service page.
Portals are dead. Even the one Podtech thought it was building. Dead. Dead. Dead. (PodTech is moving away from the portal model, by the way, in the site redesign we’re doing. Instead we’re going to a “microsite” model where one URL is for one thing).
John Dvorak is right about YouTube (damn, I never thought I’d be using the words “Dvorak” and “right” in the same sentence).
You wanna beat YouTube you gotta pass the BlinkTest. Next! Who wants to submit something for the BlinkTest?