Show HN: my weekend project - stumbleupon for videos

http://cyrolaughs.com/videos/1605610326-1kAG39jKi0lI#.Ts18MnNZiz0

by stollercyrus • 15 years ago

45 27 15 years ago

stollercyrus13• 15 years ago

When my friends and I were sharing videos online this weekend, I realized that a lot of times we just wanted to have something interesting play. It was a drag having to rack our brains or look for new videos to watch. Hopefully this will be fun.

I'd love as much feedback as possible.

Also if you have fun and interesting videos, please submit them.

Added bonuses: It seems that watching embedded videos means that you don't have to watch ads before a youtube video starts. You also don't need to resize the video or click play.

amandalim89• 15 years ago

love it!!! brilliant idea!i usually 'stumble upon' videos via facebook when my friends post anything interesting.

stollercyrus13• 15 years ago

Thanks. I'm glad you like it.

Most of the videos that I've enjoyed recently come from friends on Facebook and Twitter too. Wanted it to be easier to find videos that like-minded people enjoy.

aeontech2• 15 years ago

You do know about http://video.stumbleupon.com/ right? :)

Not that that takes away anything from your project of course :)

stollercyrus13• 15 years ago

I really like http://video.stumbleupon.com, but I feel like I spend 90% of the time stumbling after a few secs.

I wanted to try to make a site where I want to watch a higher proportion of the videos all the way through. Figured that it would be a fun weekend project.

aeontech2• 15 years ago

Mad props on sitting down and actually hacking something out :)

cfontes• 15 years ago

Nice stuff just spend ten minutes watching it ! keep it up.

stollercyrus13• 15 years ago

Thanks for the support :)

ashleyw• 15 years ago

Does it use any algorithms to figure out what I might like most given my voting history, or is it just random?

stollercyrus13• 15 years ago

It is trying to use your voting history during a session to line up the best video to show you next without repeating.

It balances certain priorities. It starts by showing you popular videos and then based on how you vote shows you similar ones, while mixing in new videos so that they can get profiled.

About 20% of the time it will show you a random video that h received positive reviews overall.

If people have ideas about cool algorithms to try, I'm all ears. How is it doing?

ofca4• 15 years ago

cool project! one design advice though. Remove the large yellow rectangle above the video that shows your history. I like the idea, but dont make it so dominant, it kinda distracts too much. :)

ofca4• 15 years ago

and dont make it to end the video when you vote :)

stollercyrus13• 15 years ago

Good suggestion. Maybe I'll just have the skip and dislike buttons automatically move to the next video. Maybe the Awesome button will get changed to a next button using jQuery. What do you think?

stollercyrus13• 15 years ago

I agree. Do you think it would be better placed under the action buttons?

stollercyrus13• 15 years ago

I moved the messages to the bottom. Do you think I should just get rid of the box all together?

ofca4• 15 years ago

super mate! yeah, try it without the box. ill have some free time tomorrow so ill try to do a little mockup if you want :)

FlightOfGrey• 15 years ago

I like it, it would be better if it had a few more options your opinion on the video instead of just awesome or dislike, maybe a middle option would be good?

Also if this is successful and people actually use which I will when procrastinating, maybe add some other genres like extreme sports, interesting etc?

rupzilla• 15 years ago

This is pretty cool. I like http://www.shortform.com/. You can browse by keyword then press Play, Pause, Next, and Previous. It's great for people who want to stumble on videos for some time.

nmridul• 15 years ago

Nice attempt. I had created http://mustwatchvideos.com couple of years before (still running great), just to filter the wheat from the chaff. It is very difficult to find really good videos from the thousands out there on the net. Most of the popular ones are either some tv shows or albums, but the real gems though small in number are really gems.

Edit: One thing to watch out for is the spammy and porn# submissions that you need to moderate each and every day. Its a huge effort specially when you accept user submissions.

stollercyrus13• 15 years ago

Cool site. Thanks for the tips and advice.

I tried to challenge myself to keep things as simple as possible and to minimize click count.

switz• 15 years ago

If I hit awesome, it shouldn't load a new page. It should just vote "Awesome" through AJAX therefore I can continue watching the video.

stollercyrus13• 15 years ago

Thanks for the feedback. I totally agree. Hopefully I'll get that out soon.

I'm thinking that after you click awesome the button will change to a "next video" button. Is that what you had in mind?

Are there any other places that you think I should be using AJAX?

adrianwaj• 15 years ago

There was a site called Nowmov (backed by Ashton Kutcher) that did something very similar, but took videos from twitter as ones to show. It's been shut down after a number of improvements, it is now called nowbox - a set top box and tv guide of youtube channels, apparently.

You could let people sign-in with youtube, grab their likes, favourites and subscriptions - analyze the tags of those videos and try and tailor videos around those. YT already has a recommendations tab so you'd be playing second fiddle to that.

Show HN: my weekend project - stumbleupon for videos

Related Stories