Forget tweets and status updates, here's a new way to socialize online
With the purchase this year of Veoh, a free website for watching TV and video clips, the creators of the content-sharing platform Qlipso got to test this hypothesis on more than 10,000 users a day: that interactions with media last longer when shared with friends.
I spoke last week with Qlipso CEO Jon Goldman about how the Veoh-Qlipso pairing works -- and about how the company's hypothesis turned out.
First, here's how Goldman describes Qlipso:
It's a multi-user social environment for checking out content together. You can watch the same video with friends, talk to each other by voice or text chat, represent yourself by a 3-D animated avatar or webcam, invite friends, share it with your social network.
It's like being in your TV room or a sports bar or a comedy club. It brings together content, communication and personal expression. Those are the key things you need to socialize. It's also a change in emphasis. The main event in a lot of people's minds is the media. But in our minds the main event is the socializing. The media is the context that brings people together. Offline if you're going to a sports game, what you're really doing is hanging out with friends. The content, the baseball game, is what brings you together. To enjoy the game, you want to express your personality by cheering or high-fiving.
Those things aren't as well represented on the web in the way we've implemented them in Qlipso. [In Qlipso] you not only watch a piece of media together, but you jump up in the air with your avatar. You can switch to webcam to see each other's faces when somebody tells a funny joke. It's that clever synthesis in doing it in a web-based way that's important.
Here's more of our Q&A:
How do you link up with friends on Qlipso?
We've got Facebook connect and Twitter connect. The Qlipso room you create has a permanent link, so it's a URL you can send to anybody. They don't have to be members. It's all browser based. Unlike a lot of multi-player environments, you don't need to have some client application or download. It's as easy as taking a link.
Talk about your recent acquisition of Veoh.
The reason for acquiring the assets of Veoh is market strategy. We acquired a global user base that we could then bring this Qlipso technology to, test it out and tune it. It's really hard when you're growing something from scratch to figure out what resonates with users. The best way is to have actual users. Now we've got millions of them all over the world.
What new features have you added to Qlipso recently?
The most exciting development we've had over the past few days is this ability to bring Qlipso rooms to an unlimited number of users. Just a few days ago, only five people could be in a room at a time. If you had a big event, you'd need to have 20,000 rooms of five people. Now we have the ability for people to get together in a giant room setting, still seeing people around them a few at a time, but able to scroll around and start conversations with tons of people. We also have the ability for a host or celebrity to be involved. They can move between the main video screen and their own webcam or avatar.
Who are your competitors?
Our strategy is not to be a destination site in competition with YouTube. I see our main competition as social games. Instead of putting in the middle of that game structure a fantasy environment or a set of tasks, we're saying the center is mainstream content. We think that's attractive because people don't get tired of watching videos or listening to music. Other than the most dedicated people, you will not be playing FarmVille for the rest of your life. But you will be watching videos. If we make a comfortable and friendly environment for you to do that with friends, we can have you as a user for much longer than a game company can. We'll apply a lot of the same techniques for rewarding your behavior as games do, but it will be around content.
Do you have anything else to add?
We're doubling the level of engagement within a Qlipso environment. When people watch videos by themselves on Veoh, they're spending about 10 minutes. When they're doing it with friends on Qlipso, they're spending about 20 minutes. Doubling is a tremendous extension of time and proves our hypothesis that doing stuff together with friends will make a big difference in how people spend time with content. When we implanted Qlipso on Veoh in July, we started to see that.
Image, top: Screenshot of Veoh with Qlipso
Image, bottom: Jon Goldman
This post was originally published on Smartplanet.com