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)

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)

It is all about sharing...

The BaconMarathon team just launched a cool 'sharing' videos with friends feature.

Here is how it works:

Step 1. Find a video that you either totally love or you think your friend will totally love and click on the red 'Share Video With Friends' button. (pic below)

Step 2. When the new pop-up appears, type in friend(s) you'd like to share with and hit 'Send'.

Step 3. On the next screen, type in a witty comment to entice your friend to waste a little of their time watching the video and hit 'Publish'.

Step 4. A message appears on your friends wall and they are notified that you requested them to watch the video!

I have been sharing videos that I have been watching over the last month to my friends all morning. It is a total blast!

As usual, feedback is mandatory and welcome...

-Bacon

Simplifying things...

In recent weeks, we have started to see a bump in the usage of the site. <-- Very Pumped!

As mentioned in the past, we're trying to create an experience that combines 'user interests' with watching videos AND shopping. Before we went live with a new release last night, the user had the ability to scroll through videos and shopping at the same time but could not do the same thing while watching a video. From the useage data, it became apparent that it was difficult for the user to want to do both.

Soooo, we started brainstorming and came up with a new, easier to use, video and shopping scrolling experience, as well as, added the ability to shop while watching videos.

Notice on this screen that the user can watch a 'Simpson's spoof on Star Wars' and also shop for 'Star Wars' goodies below the watching area.

We very excited about this new user experience. It puts shopping right in the middle of the action and also allows for room for great new features that are in our little heads at the moment.

Stay tuned for some really cool, engaging features to come in the near future!

-the BaconMarathon Team

Part 3: FOAFOAF <-- Achieving the 'triple loop'

This is the final part for of the 3 part series focusing on how we have focused the last month on achieving viral-ness with top3Clicks. We started with learning how the application behaves using cheap Facebook ads and then we added a new 'Igniter' called YouTube videos.

Now we have started to achieve what we internally have been calling a 'triple loop'.

What is a 'triple loop' (friend of a friend of a friend)?

1. A user clicks on a Facebook ad and authorizes that they would like to watch videos on top3Clicks.

An example of an ad we have been running for the last week or so.

Click on the ad to the right to give it a whirl! -->

The ad is targeted towards users that love to watch spoofs on YouTube and specifically "The Dark Knight" franchise. We thought this is a natural for what we're trying to do because The Dark Knight is one of the big holiday items this year. Users watch Batman spoof videos from YouTube may be interested in buying relevant items on Amazon.

2. The original user enjoys the experience and invites their friends to try out the application via the link. Their friends will see the request to try top3Clicks in the upper right corner of their Facebook home page.

3. The invited friend tries the application and also enjoys the experience. This second user then notifies their friends to try the application.

The triple loop is when the original friend (1) has spread the word about top3Clicks to friends (2) that then tell their friends (3) where the original friend may or may not know the third.

Conclusion: With Facebook ads we are now achieving viral-ness. Stay tuned as we make enhancements to the experience to continue to get users to consistently come back.

Part 2: The new 'Igniter' --> YouTube Videos!

As mentioned in the previous post, we believe we are on to something by getting a significant amount of users to the site (using an inexpensive approach) but we did not see any increase in orders or authorizations. We needed a new igniter.

We started brainstorming how we tackle this issue by looking at other Facebook applications that users have virally embraced. (Important note: we're not talking about the applications that use mandatory inviting or spamming techniques)

Looking at Adonomics, the top 10 companies focus on: self-expression widgets, social games, non-profit causes, dating/meetup helpers and vertical reviewing (movies, books, etc.) All of these applications enhance the users experience on Facebook but none seem, on the surface, to give users an experience based on their interests.

The light bulb went off for us that since top3Clicks is already recommending items based on the users interests then it is feels natural that these users would want to see videos based on their interests. We hoping we can add to the YouTube phenomenon as the igniter. So we burned the midnight oil and launched the ability to select, watch and share YouTube videos in a way that may not have been presented this way before.

Here is a screenshot:

If a user has Guns N' Roses in their Facebook interests then notice how they can watch YouTube videos and also shop for items on Amazon. The igniter idea is that users tend to want to come back often to watch new interesting videos and if there is something 'impulsively' interesting they can buy right there.

So continuing from the last post, we dropped an ad to test our theory...

5. With the new Guns album arriving in stores today after 17 years, we decided to drop the following ad yesterday. -->

Our expectations: We focused the site and the advertising around watching videos and suggest that you can purchase items.

We learned: First, people love Guns N' Roses. Second, when users clicked to our site a much greater number of users authenticated in to watch videos. <-- big improvement! We also saw a great deal of clicking to Amazon but want to do more research into what users were doing. Conclusion: It is super early, only a half week, but we're already seeing the qualities we hope to see with YouTube videos. More users have authenticated to use our service and we're seeing the addictive qualities of YouTube.