Recommendations are being overhauled

bliptv:

We released a new recommendations feature on Tuesday afternoon. The reason for the feature is simple: we want to get more shows more viewers.

After having the feature out in the wild for a day, though, we’ve decided that we can do a better job with it. We need to make it clearer how you can find more episodes of the same show you’re watching. We need to make sharing in the “endcap” (the screen that appears after a video plays) easier. We need to make it clearer that we’re recommending shows other than the one you’re watching. We also need to make it easier for show creators to opt out of recommendations.

We’re going to be pulling back the recommendations implementation in a few minutes. It will be coming back in a week or two better than ever: Recommendations 2.0.

Sometimes you move too quickly at start-ups. We moved too quickly in releasing recommendations.

The end result of recommendations should significantly benefit show creators. But we didn’t do a good job with the actual execution of the feature. Lots of show creators e-mailed us thinking that the recommendations were an ad. Others were concerned that clicks on recommendations played back other people’s videos on their Web sites. Some were concerned that their viewers would think the recommended videos came from the show they were originally watching.

We learned a lesson. We’re pulling back the feature and completely overhauling it. Sometimes it’s best to admit you made a mistake and then fix it.

Notes about this post from the Tumblr community:

mikehudack liked this
bliptv reblogged this from mikehudack
spytap reblogged this from mikehudack and added:

This is why Blip.tv is as successful as it is (emphasis mine.)
whitneymcn reblogged this from mikehudack and added:

I’m impressed — absolutely the right thing to do, but a tough decision.
john liked this
mikehudack reblogged this from bliptv and added:

Sometimes you move too quickly at start-ups....moved too quickly
bliptv posted this