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I recently got an email from a user wondering if I had any good tips or trick s for searching for and adding media to make his lists better.  Great question and through our back-and-forth emails decided that there are probably many people wondering the same thing.

At 10to1 we rely on our big brother Google to help us out with finding media, links and information. Our media grabber utilizes Google Images and Video to pick through the billions of media on the Internets.

EASY Way

To add pictures or video to the list:

1. Click “Get Media URL”
2. Type in a descriptive name for what you are looking for. It helps to be creative sometimes to find that EXACT picture or video.  TIP - If you are having problems try 2 or 3 words to search more specifically or 1 word to search more broadly. 
3. Select “Copy” to automatically post the picture to your list. Voila! You are done. 

EXPERT Way

Search the Internets for your image. Once found right click or open apple click and select “Copy Image URL” for pictures. Then right click or open apple select “Paste” in to the URL field and select “Image”.

Video URL’s can be handled the exact same way. Instead of selecting “Image” you will select “Video”. You may also embed movies right in to the “Description” field.  You will need to grab the embed URL that looks like this 

<object width=”425″ height=”344″><param name=”movie” value=”http://www.youtube.com/v/R7yfISlGLNU&hl=en&fs=1″></param><param name=”allowFullScreen” value=”true”></param><param name=”allowscriptaccess” value=”always”></param><embed src=”http://www.youtube.com/v/R7yfISlGLNU&hl=en&fs=1″ type=”application/x-shockwave-flash” allowscriptaccess=”always” allowfullscreen=”true” width=”425″ height=”344″></embed></object>

Please view this video for a quick run through of the different ways to add media:

I just got back from an insightful trip to Miami for FOWA (Future of Web Apps). This was like 4 yrs of college, with a major in How to Build a Great Web App Company, rolled in to 2 days. My biggest takeaway was listening to what you, the users want! It was beat in to our heads! I have some good ideas on what the employees of 10to1 can do to make the service better. But….I can place all my chips on the bet that you have MUCH better ideas! I want to pick your brain. Here is what I am wondering:

• Do you want us to cut out the reporting of your activity on the site under your user listing?
• Should we remove adding descriptions in items, list?
• Remove commenting on individual items?
• Change the voting algorithm to a +1, -1 versus division?
• What else do you want to us to do to make it a better experience?

The best quote from FOWA (and there were SOOO many) “Customer support is sales.”

P.S. If you don’t want to leave comments here..tweet us @tentoone or me @koreyb.

Micro-Work [mahy-kroh wurk] - adj - 1. Small efforts of web users through typing, clicking, reading.

I invented this term to describe the behavior I noticed in users of the most successful sites. Look at Twitter, for instance. 140 characters of text. Easy, quick and to the point. A behavior that can be repeated endlessly. What are you doing? Want to share a link of your favorite video clip? Post a picture? All can be done in a short period of time. Less than a minute, preferably less than 30 seconds.

Users can’t get bored by these quick actions. They aren’t sitting at a computer, eyes bleeding, for hours at a time. They can do a few tweets in the AM and get instant gratification. Come noon they may even have replies that they can respond to all in 30 seconds or less. It is an easily repeatable cycle compounded by the millions of users that make up the social network of Twitter.

What other sites use micro-work? Wikipedia, Facebook, search engines. YouTube does. The most popular videos in terms of views are all a few minutes long. Easy to watch, easy to click on, easy to share. Actually, all operations on the site are quick and remove excess. Posting a video is as easy as browsing, selecting and entering a title and description. A few operations that can be done quickly.

Viewing, of course, is as simple as hitting play after your desired video is found. But then it is just as easy to click over to a related video and watch that in under 5 mins. You can quickly indicate if you liked the video through a star vote or by adding a comment.

Micro-work has come in to focus for me because of our problems with content creation on 10to1. Our first iteration of the site in Aug 2008 included a Create List Feature with 10 list item boxes.  In all there were 43 separate inputs! An average list could be created in 20 mins. A good list could take up to an hour of work! You can see why many people decided against creating a list.

Our new content creation has been slimmed down with micro-work in mind. To start a list it is as simple as entering a title, description and category. Easy, quick and to the point in less than 30 seconds. From there anyone in the community can add items. Add a title (with link if you would like), description and media. 3 steps is all it takes in under 30 seconds! We made content creation far more accessible by breaking up the parts of list creation and simplifying each step.

Our next battle is with the task of going out and retrieving images and video for your list. This task eats up the most time of any action on our site. Go to Google Image Search, pick your image from the hundreds offered, right-click and copy the image URL, come back to 10to1, paste in to the “Add A Media URL”. Multiplied by 10 items and it gets laborious and really, not fun!

Over the next week we will be releasing our solution to this problem. I am stoked to see what users think of this upgrade. More details to follow!

So my advice to anyone with a web property or is thinking about starting one…keep it simple. Keep actions and tasks to only a few minutes of work with as efficient input as possible. Any actions on the site must be micro-work for your site to be successful.

Best,

Korey

Hi everyone,

2008 was an exciting year for us at  10to1 and we want to thank everyone involved in helping to make the launch of the site a success. I thought I would recap some of the year’s highlights.

- Site launched on July 25, 2008

- Traffic up to 15k visits/month and 33k page views/month

- Launch of Seeds

- Launch of Buttons and Widgets

- Social media networking through Facebook and Twitter added

- Facebook app launched

- Facebook Connect launched

It has been a great start and a fun company to be involved in. Thanks for making 2008 a great year!

Korey

I have to start somewhere! The private list feature has been a great addition to 10to1. Amongst friends, it has given us a cool forum to talk about who was the best dunk ball player or where was the best place to hang out back in the day. But..I think there is a business use in this tool. How can use this tool within your company? Get input on a new project? Consensus on a new hire..etc?  I’d like to hear your thoughts!

It has been an amazing ride since my last progress report!  I am having a great time meeting new users and having conversations with them about how we can make the site better. Here are the latest stats:

• 400 users (up 700%)
• 235 public lists (up 88%)
• 8 private lists 
• 390 star votes (up 95%)
• 14,872 list item votes (up 645%)
• 1507 comments (up 1100%)

My friends and I have been busy the last few days shooting jokes and jabs at each other on the new private list feature.  Everyone has to try this…invite your friends, family and loved ones to create a list to share in. You can create a list about past memories, competition or who’s the greatest at a particular sport/event/talent. The options are only limited by your imagination! Private lists are incribly addictive…I hope you have fun with them!

Top 5 Reasons to Create a Private List

1. Find out who’s the best!
2. Trash talk.
3. Be reminded of past events.
4. Engage with your friends and family.
5. Let your voice be heard!

Gary delivers again with a monster presentation.  Here is the video (pardon the quality, Flip Mino has some trouble with clarity in full zoom):

Gary Vaynerchuk - Arizona Entrepreneurship Conference 2008 from Korey Bachelder on Vimeo.

My notes:

“Like my neighbor told my mother…no season was safe from me ringing her doorbell looking for straight cash.”

Twitter, Ustream.tv, these are tools, phones, walkie talkies, pencils.
All about ROI.
The web is social, companies/products are no longer presenting to the room…they
are working the room.
The big companies/management don’t care…huge opportunity.

Have patience.
Have the chops, know what you are talking about or you are out of the game.
Content is king, marketing is queen (and we all know who runs the household).
Time and effort in to the community.

Gary answers every email he gets, 500-1000 emails per day!
Use search.twitter.com to ego search…get in on the conversation.
Addresses every negative concern head on.
If you are not good, fess up to it.
Soical media gives your company a pulse.

$4.2mm over 8 yrs in advertising for wine library
$17,620 in 2 1/2 yrs to build wine library tv
49 vcs have approached to buy out the company
44 have given a higher value to wine library tv than wine library which includes a $10mm piece of property

Brand value, put yourself out there
Authenticity
Be yourself, you will win

Live within your network
Email people, start building your network
Become part of your community

Put out your content, gatekeepers are gone, no editors or producers.
That is what we believe in….word-of-fucking-mouth
Word of mouth is on steroids

Care about your community more than anything, they are in a position to help you more than ever.
Takes a lot of time, can’t throw money at it
The cost is your heart and your soul and your time…not your checkbook.

80 packages a day from wine producers to promote on winelibrary.tv
64% of wines he didn’t like on the show
98% he carries

Money has been neutralized!

Gary doesn’t like drinking out of cups.
He got a standing ovation!

Here is what my friend Bret had to say about it:

Q&A Session:

Gary Vaynerchuk - Q & A from AZ Entrepreneurship Conference 2008 from Korey Bachelder on Vimeo.

The design process has been a bit more time consuming than I thought.  We have gone through a few different looks and we are close to picking a launch design. I wanted to make sure we nailed it, as design and usability are a big part of a website’s success.  Below are our current design ideas.

Notes concept:

Winter concept:

Politics concept:

Voting Concept:

Finally, finally….starting to see some traffic from search engines.  I am learning to be patient as we build up the community and content.  It hasn’t been easy, but I am encouraged by the traffic that Google is beginning to send us.  It is only a fraction of our total traffic, but I will take it! Eventually it should be around 50% of total traffic.

An upward ticking graph is great to see!