

Ask HN: Review my video startup, mixy.tv - mixydrew

Hey guys,<p>Me and a couple of buddies started a video aggregation site a few months ago called mixy.tv.  We are actively looking for beta users and just recently opened it up out of private beta.  We would love any feedback specifically in relation to user flow and UI.  Do you guys find our layout appealing and an enjoyable way to find new interesting videos?  We also would love any feedback on how useful you think it is to log the videos you watch in order to share those with your friends and followers on mixy.  Really appreciate any time and advice in advance!<p>-Andrew
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frugalfirbolg
Critical feedback up front:

Before signing up, please note that the demo video (which looked pretty, and I
should have paid more attention to) when played in Chrome never successfully
exited for me, i.e. the sign up elements continued to be hidden (yea, made
sure it wasn't full-screen). I tried zooming in and out, pausing and playing
the video. I did not investigate the DOM. A refresh restored the initial state
and after signing-up I haven't revisited to play with it more.

Signing up felt a little like "hunt for the link that leads to the behavior I
want". After clicking "Sign up with Facebook" at the bottom left and then
telling Facebook I didn't want to give your app all of the requested
permissions it aborted, but when I initiated Sign Up from the Login link at
the top right, chose to use Facebook, and denied the app requested
permissions, it rolled along.

I went through several of the videos and didn't see any with comments yet. I
noticed that you're not linking back to the comments on the original site, and
can understand there being several reasons for that, but I do wonder if there
will be any integration with Twitter, Facebook, and Google+ for the comments
that originate in mixy.tv? Do they get re-posted to those other services, with
hashtags for Twitter, so that followers from those services are tempted to
join mixy.tv and become part of the fun?

Besides crowd-sourced tagging and filtering, are there any plans to create
recommendations?

Since I am not following anyone else that is using mixy.tv yet, is the "People
I Follow" link supposed to show people I follow on other social networks, and
will I also be able to follow people just through mixy.tv in case we're coming
from different walled gardens?

One feature request would be to enable bookmarks within videos, with their own
urls, so users can comment on specific points in the video, and link directly
to the frame they're talking about.

Finally answering your questions:

Overall the site looks clean, the layout after signing in makes sense.

I'd like to thank your service for revealing this video to me:
[http://mixy.tv/posts/ea5c3e/this-dude-loves-his-job-best-
cot...](http://mixy.tv/posts/ea5c3e/this-dude-loves-his-job-best-cotton-candy-
maker-ever)

However, I need some help seeing the added value in general over my current
means of finding videos. It appears the primary means to find videos is either
manually searching or from the people I already follow.

By the way, is the List functionality enabled? The dialog says I created one,
but then I can't find the list I created.

~~~
frugalfirbolg
Sorry, quick p.s. after playing with it a little more. I found my new list
under my user profile page. So, I need to create a new list with the link up
top, then figure out that RePost at the bottom right really means Add To A
List. Then, if I go to my own profile I can see my list, and can remove videos
within it, but I haven't figured out how to remove the list itself yet. Now
that I know all of this I can remember it, but I mostly figured it out by
clicking random buttons. The user should be able to grok it from the labels
and relative positions.

~~~
mixydrew
Really appreciate all the comments here. We have been focusing on making the
service more intuitive so a lot of your feedback reaffirms our need to to
that. We are connected to open graph but have not fully built out the Twitter
or Google+ share yet but that is a great idea. Thanks again for signing up and
look out for some changes in the near future. Until then any additional
comments are more than welcomed!

-Andrew

------
idoh
I work for a competitor to you but I don't mind helping you out a bit.

A - Your install flow is bad, just let people use the app if they've given you
a facebook auth. You want to remove steps to the funnel.

B - Do not ask for the publish_stream permission, ask for publish_actions
instead. The advantage of publish_actions is that it appears on the first auth
page, and not the extended permissions page. You can do almost everything that
you need to do using publish_actions that you can with publish_stream. Do not
ask for both though, or else they will both be on the extended permissions
page.

C - You must get Open Graph going ASAP.

I can describe some wrinkles to publish_actions v. publish_stream, just ping
me.

~~~
mixydrew
Hey idoh!

We are looking into the Facebook sign up user flow right now but thank you for
bringing that to our attention and for the recommendation to go the
publish_actions route.

In relation to Open Graph we actually do have that built out and there is
Facebook timeline on and off feature in the top right. Was it not working
properly for you?

Thanks, Andrew

~~~
idoh
That confuses me a little bit. When I think of Open Graph, I think of making a
custom action verb, or using a built in one like "watch". As far as I know you
can't post open graph actions without getting the publish_actions permission.
So I'm guessing that by open graph you mean publishing stories on the user's
timeline using publish_stream, which is the graph api but not open graph.

I can see how you could publish events as stories using publish_stream, but
Facebook wants you to use Open Graph / Actions for that and gives benefits for
using open graph actions instead of publishing stories.

~~~
calvinlai
Hey idoh,

I'm one of the developers at mixy.tv -- we are indeed asking for
publish_actions and using open graph to publish video watches and likes.
However, we use publish_stream for adding a video because we found that it
shows up more often in the news feed as opposed to being shown in the ticker
on the right of the FB home page.

I think you have a good point though about publish_stream being in the
extended permission screen, however. I know you mentioned working for a
competitor, so you don't have to answer this if you don't want to, but -- have
you guys seen better conversion rates for signups or better share rates by
using Open Graph actions explicitly as opposed to a combination of
publish_stream and publish_actions?

~~~
idoh
Here's a couple observations:

I've tried the app with a couple test users, I don't see the publish_actions
permission come up. I'll assume you are correct though, but you might want to
make sure that this is the case. For answering I'll assume that you are
correct. Asking for only publish_actions is the way to go, I have metrics on
it, but I can prove it mathematically / logically, so I don't have to use
stats for it....

\- publish_stream always gets asked on the extended permissions page

\- publish_actions will get asked on the first page, except if you ask for
publish_stream too, in which case both show up in extended permissions

\- when you make a story post, you don't get to decide under which permission
to do it, Facebook just check to make sure that you've the proper permissions.

\- if a user has given publish_stream, then the stories are visible to the
posting user in their newsfeed.

\- if a user has publish_actions, then that story is NOT visible to the
posting user in their newsfeed, but their friends can see it, and they can see
it on their timeline.

\- if you have both perms for a user, then when you make a post on behalf of
that user, Facebook will make it in the style of a publish_action story, so
the posting user won't see it. So to a practical effect, it is not really
useful to have publish_stream if you already have publish_actions.

So, given the above observations about Facebook and applying it to your case,
because you are asking for both perms then they both are on the extended
permissions page. Because you have both perms, when you post a story it is
going out in the publish_actions style.

If you look at the funnel, it is:

Current: sign in with FB > regular perms > extended perms > signed in.

Proposed: sign in with FB > regular perms > signed in.

The proposed solution is better because:

\- it removes a step in the funnel. You probably have double digit drop off
from one step to the next, so that helps dramatically with virality.

\- publish_actions moves from extended to regular permissions, so you get that
earlier

\- you don't lose anything by not having publish_stream, because if you have
publish_actions then your story posts are done like publish_actions and not
publish_stream, so it is a perm that you aren't really using or need.

The con of the proposal is that publish actions requires a token, and the
token expires after 60 days if the user doesn't come back. Internally I've
found that stale users like that aren't that useful as a viral channel anyway.
So it isn't really much of a con.

~~~
calvinlai
To clarify, publish_stream is a superset permission that includes
publish_actions. That's why you're not seeing it.

While I agree with you that it removes a step in the funnel, we still need
read_stream to provide our advertised service, that is pulling videos that
your friends post on Facebook. read_stream is also an extended permission so
we can't get around that additional screen anyway.

However, I've read that less permissions means a higher conversion rate so we
may experiment with removing publish_stream and only asking for read_stream +
publish_actions and we'll see what happens.

Thanks for all your input!

------
zaidf
So, I like the idea! I share a lot of videos on facebook but their present UI
makes it super hard to only check out videos. You seem to kind of address
that.

I do think you can improve your messaging. I _kind of_ knew what you offer but
not really until I signed up. One way you could pitch this is show a
screenshot of a facebook newsfeed on the left and a screenshot of Mixy on the
right going through that feed and picking out all the videos. Of course, make
those sample videos in the screenshot seem very compelling and bait-ish.

Edit: Dude, put a huge link that just shows all the videos _I've_ shared on
facebook. That itself would be extremely useful to me.

~~~
mixydrew
Hey Zaidf,

Yea we are working thru the site being more intuitive and making it simpler to
explain how to use the site in general. I love the videos I've shared on
Facebook idea. We'll put it in the que!

-Andrew

~~~
zaidf
Awesome! Jenny told me about your site some time ago :) Good to see it on HN.

Another thing - when I click play, it's not apparent that it's a modal and
there is an 'X' on top left. I thought you were taking me to a new page. May
be reduce the opacity of the background or put a larger 'close' button at
bottom center?

