All of the new goodness...

We may have seemed like we were away for a long time but we have actually been heads down and focused on a couple big fronts...

1. A new & improved front door - We were watching organic traffic hit the old front door over time and watch the big bounce. So we decided to make a new 'clean' front door design that focused on showing what people are doing on the site at that moment.

2. A new improved signup process - We all know that logging into a site with a Facebook and/or Twitter account increases the fun. We modified the signup process to focus on getting users to use their accounts over creating a specific PersistentFan account.

3. Facebook Like - There is a new Facebook Like button just below the playing video. If you click on this button you can leave a comment on your wall about the video you are watching.

4. Adding Wikipedia snippets - We add a dynamically created Wikipedia snippet for every topic a fan is interested in following. This makes the site more compelling for fans that want to dive deep into the subject while watching videos.

5. Suggested topics to follow - We are now providing a quick list of the most watched topics at the moment the user is on the site. Another way to give users ideas of what to follow.

We have more on the way, stay tuned...

Regards,
Bacon

The new PersistentFan widget

Quick update from coffeeshop headquarters.  We just created the first PersistentFan widget that is focused on allowing sites that are persistent fans of any topic to add content to their sites without taking important real estate on their page.

To see the widget in action go to ElevatorSpeed.com and play around. 

The user experience:

Screenshot 1:  Click on the orange Check out Coachella videos tab on the left side of the page.

Screenshot 2:  When clicked the PersistentFan widget slides open on top of the publishers site.  Coachella fans can click thumbnails to watch concert footage, the Twitter conversation and share with friends on Facebook, Digg and Email.

Screenshot 3:  User click on the orange on the orange tab again to close the widget.

As with all the features and ideas BaconMarathon Labs implements, we are putting this widget out there and looking for feedback.

1. If you think it has the potential and totally awesome, let us know.

2. If you think it is missing features or you just don't get it, let us know.

3. If you have a site and are also a PersistentFan of pretty much anything and want to add this widget to your site, lets us know!  
(just email info@baconmarathon.com and we'll get right back to you)

Take care,
Mike (Bacon)

Defining what is a PersistentFan

The BaconMarathon team's interest/enthusiasm has always centered around being PersistentFans of something in all the major genres (music, movies, TV shows and sports, etc.) since well, forever. (Look at previous posts to see what we dig.)

We have been heads down focused on the ever evolving study of online fandom and what fan's must have to keep up, discover and influence.

Defining levels of fandom:

Everybody has interests. When a person's interest gains enthusiasm that is the genesis of becoming a fan of a topic. From our own experiences, we know there are different passion levels based on certain topics.

Which leads us to write down what are the levels of passion a fan can have? Mike May's "The Five Levels Of Beatles Fandom" provides a simple example of what we're looking to use as a guide.

level 0
'Casual radio listeners' that hear a Beatle's song and enjoy it but do not pursue much further.

For PersistentFan.com this equals a fan discovering PersistentFan.com from Twitter or a friend and watching a couple videos.

level 1
'The entry level Beatles fan is the kind of person who, having heard and liked some of their music, actually goes out and buys a couple of their albums.'

For PersistentFan.com this equals a fan that watches a couple videos then adds topics to watch on their list or the user selects a twitter trending topic and watches videos on the subject.

level 2
'Having absorbed and grown to like the initial handful of albums and craving for more, our fan moves up to the next level when he decides that he wants to own a complete set of Beatles songs.'

For PersistentFan.com this equals a fan that creates an account on the site and has created a list of topics they want to watch (get notified) over time.

level 3
'By now interested in all things Beatle, our fan’s happiness is short-lived, however, when he discovers that, although he owns all the tracks the group released, there are a large range of compilations, singles and EPs and so on that were originally released but which are missing from his collection.'

For PersistentFan.com this equals the user sharing videos on Twitter, Facebook, Digg and/or email with friends. In turn friends use PersistentFan.com send videos to other friends, etc.

level 4
'Once again though, this happiness does not last long. Our hapless fan has by now taken to reading extensively about the group. To his dismay, he finds that his collection is very far from complete.'

For PersistentFan.com this equals providing the ability to allow fans to easily get to content beyond videos and the conversation for any given topic. The PersistentFan Widget allows influencers to add content to their sites a provide fans with more.

level 5
'But then one day, a final calamitous realisation dawns. He spots a copy of the Spanish Por Siempre Beatles or the Brazilian Os Reis Do Ié, Ié, Ié!. Not only were there a vast number of albums with different tracklists released all around the world, but even the familiar British titles came with a range of alternate artwork.'

For PersistentFan.com this equals providing the ability for fans a one stop shop to aggregate and post content, create channels where they control content is important and share this content via widget or over the social networks.


Couple questions for the PersistentFans out there:
1. Using the levels mentioned above for things you care about what would you like to see in a website to make your heart rate go up a level?

2. What sites do you use today to keep up with the things you care about?

Feedback is always welcome,
Mike (Bacon)

We just got addictive with 'Autoplay'!

From user feedback, we implemented what we are calling 'Autoplay'.

In the past, if you discovered a topic with more than one video you wanted to watch then you would watch the first video then click the next preview to watch the next video.

Now, with Autoplay, PersistentFan automatically goes to the next video in the list. This allows you to sit back and enjoy a series of interesting videos without stopping what you are doing.

The user experience is outlined in the screenshot below, notice the 'now playing' box around the preview. This is the video the user is currently watching. When the video finishes the next preview to the right becomes the video that starts playing.


Here are a couple of great topics to give this a whirl:
Breaking bands at SXSW 2010
Aziz Ansari
The Simpsons
The Onion
Star Wars Spoofs

Enjoy,
Mike (Bacon)

PersistentFan has a new logo design!

In celebration of Army Day (March 4th), we decided to take a bunch of new features live today.

First, check out our new logo design! The idea behind the new logo was to figure out how to incorporate the branding into the actual user experience. (Plus get rid of that overused 'search' word!)

Logo was designed by Tello Design, check them out!

2. We have enhanced the video share section to include the ability to Digg, share via Email and cut 'n paste the URL into websites, etc. the videos you love the most.

Thanks Digg, your API was dirt easy to implement. We got it working in a day, unlike some of your 'competitors'!


Email directly, if you want to talk 'Army Day' talk,
Mike (Bacon)

Under the hood...

We over the last couple years the main focus of this blog has been to talk about user experiences, features, distribution lesson, cool discoveries and dreaded bugs.

To get a taste of some of the things we're doing under the hood, check out: Marathon's (Hodson's Blog). His current post (Queuing Tweets with Amazon’s (AWS) SQS) focuses on how we're handling sending traffic to the Twitter platform.

This little itsy-bitsy startup is tackling some nice problems!

-Bacon (Mike)

So busy, I mean really busy...!

When the BaconMarathon team started working on PersistentFan, one of the philosophies we discussed adhering to was to iterate, iterate, iterate and riff on the initial idea in the public forum. We decided to take this approach to prevent the gridlock of not shipping due to perceived lack of readiness the crippled some of our big company experiences.

To accomplish this goal, we knew we had to focus on two things:

1. Constantly tweak, add features & fix bugs in quick cycles after the initial launch.
   
2. Communicate with our users/fans with what we're up to often via Facebook, Twitter, our blog and on the actual site.
   

Well... we have been so busy doing #1 that we have let #2 slip, just a little...!

To help catch up with number 2, we're proud to announce following list since launch:

• Bubble help - While watching the first videos on the site users are presented with bubble windows that show features to educate what the site can do and help explore.
• If user is not signed in we're still going to save their fan topic to the list in their cookie. If the user comes back again they will be able to see what they have looked at in the past and add to it.
  
• Trending Categories (music, movies, TV and born today) were added to give users a great getting started point. Note that these categories are dynamically driven from RSS feeds and will be adding more as we go.
  
• Streamlined the rotation of the video experience. This was part of a bigger optimization effort to make our pages load extremely fast. (<-- always on going!)
• Added dynamic "Shop with Amazon" links per topic. Our thinking is maybe users will want to explore Amazon after watching videos of their favorite topics.
• Added Google Banner Ads at the top & added Google Link Ads at the bottom. This is one of the monetization streams we're planning to implement.
  
• Moved the 'follow us on' Twitter and Facebook links to the upper right portion of the site. We want you to follow us so you can keep up with what we're doing.
  
• Increased the size of the overall site horizontally 100px. We're getting ready to add more exciting content to the site.
• Moved the Share with FB and Twitter buttons above the videos. From your feedback, it was difficult to see how to share cool discoveries.
• Added a dynamic 'Sign Up' banner to entice users to sign in and get notification features. Users that sign up get a much better experience over time.
• SEO - Made browser title dynamically display clear English titles
• SEO - Made all the URLs display in clear English

Take care,
Mike (Bacon)

Note we plan to update the blog on a weekly basis going forward with what we're up to...

What did the BaconMarathon just do?!

After months of racking our brains, we have officially pulled the "the invite only" lock down and made the site available! As of today, everyone can now become Persistent Fans of the stuff you love! (at least we'll call it BETA)

Feel free to go to http://www.persistentfan.com and play around.

To give you some ideas to get started, here are some of the topics Bacon is watching:
animal collective
artie lange
cheech and chong
Coming To iPhone
Conan O'Brien
fillmore SF
gilmor gang
guy smiley
Increasingly Poor Decisions of Todd Margaret
Japandroids
jersey shore situation
koko cocktails
LCD Soundsystem
mavericks surf
Philadelphia Phillies
philly cheesesteaks
pitchfork tv
silversun pickups
techcrunch
The Simpsons


We've have been eating our own stew here for a couple months so we're very excited to see what you think.


Take care,
The BaconMarathon Labs Team

Mike (Bacon) & Dave (Marathon)

Introducing... (to anyone that loves to help early development)

After a little hiatus, we are full steam ahead with a brand new website called PersistentFan.com that we think users will find to be a lot of fun.

How did we get here?
From previous blog entries you can read about the steps we took towards developing top3Clicks within Facebook's "walled garden". After plenty of market testing it became painfully clear that the changes made to the user experience of the Facebook developers platform hindered ease of use for our users. Also, with the announcement of Facebook Connect, for us, it became increasingly more costly to take advantage of the initial goodness Facebook had once offered.

What is PersistentFan.com?
PersistentFan.com searches for terms from specific sites and notifies you to watch as new content that becomes available for that term over any length of time. While watching terms you can also monitor and participate in Twitter chatter of that topic.

Here are some of the new features users are in complete control over:

• Quick search of topics to see what content is available
• Maintain a topic list of terms that are important to you
• Get notified when new content become available (User controls notification frequency)
• Share cool videos on Facebook wall and participate in Twitter conversation
• Watch the Twitter chatter for specific topic
• Available as a website and modified iPhone website
  

So, as you can see, we rolled up our sleeves and took the steps to keep some top3Clicks concepts (and added a ton more) as a stand alone website.

As far as Facebook is concerned for us, we have enabled Facebook Connect and plan to continue to add features leveraging the 'new goodness' Facebook now provides.

Take care,
The BaconMarathon Labs Team

Mike (Bacon) & Dave (Marathon)