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)