The following text is a personal blog entry, done by me and me only. Since we’re a blog and not a news page, there’s some editorial going on from time to time. This text is not necessarily the opinion of my fellow Roxettebloggers. So if you want to bash us for getting a life, a new hobby or stop complaining and whining: address your comment to me, and me only, please.
MySpace is dead, long live MySpace. I never liked that platform very much. Much too messy, too many designs which make you close the site before you had a close look at the content, comments everywhere, images without further comments in all sizes and forms everywhere on the page and at the top of the page on the right a small box with audio or video files. This was the only reason to visit a MySpace page in my opinion: to get to know an artist by listening to his songs or watching his clips and afterwards to decide if it’s worth to buy a whole CD or just a song or nothing. The only problem for the artist was that he didn’t earn anything with having a MySpace site. All he got was the chance to provide his music and stuff and to find more fans – but still: no money.
Now we got a fish in the snow and this fish wants to change that. The concept is called “Snowfish” and comes from Sweden. It’s actually a bit like MySpace, artists, musicians and every fan can register a site, upload images, include a Twitter feed and offer videos to watch. This site isn’t as messy as MySpace, but still it’s everything you would file in “chaos”. There’s a beta version online already since last year’s summer and still there are so many bugs on this page, that you don’t feel a second like visiting this page. Ok, I must admit – the structure of this page is slightly better than it was on MySpace and yet there’s another reason this site is different to MySpace: the artists can earn money with it. The more traffic you have on your page the more money you earn. So it’s said on the Snowfish homepage:
At Snowfish, every single view, listen or read of your content earns you payment (50% of advertising income received from your traffic!). These payments may be small at first (pennies) but ultimately pennies add up!
So it’s obvious that it can’t be much the artists actually get, but for those, who are not famous, not rich or just too bad and need every Cent, Dollar or Euro it’s a concept which can be profitable as time goes by. The more traffic, the more money.
But now it really would be nice, if the creators of this page would work on it which means: make it less messy, make it more user-friendly. So far this is not the case. Best example for this is Per Gessle’s new Snowfish page. He’s uploading videos and pictures from the recording sessions of the new Roxette album these days. And when we take a close look at the front page of his site it looks like there’s 22 videos to watch so far:
Click on the “22” and there you are: another page which lists only 10 videos. This page looks like that:
And yes – there’s no “next page” button, no numbers telling there are more pages, no hint there could be more videos around. There’s nothing. Nothing. So, you get 10 videos and you remember you clicked on “22”. So you go back to the frontpage, wondering what happened to the other 12 videos in the meantime. On the right of the frontpage you find another link to the videos. There’s a hint called “More videos..”. Very good, you’re close to accomplishing the mission. But strange as it seems, here it says it’s only 18 videos, not 22.
So, you stay curious and click on “18”. The next page you see is not as messy as the rest and wow – indeed, 18 videos are listed. So you finally see all available footage – at least 18 of 22. The videos aren’t in a chronological or whatever order, so imagine you have around 100 videos to watch – it would take minutes to find the videos you haven’t seen yet. And this prevents you from staying on this page. Nobody wants to do the sorting him- or herself. This is something the site must offer – as a part of simple “user-friendliness”. And, of course, who wouldn’t have known, even on this page there’s a mistake, because contrary to the page you have visited before and where you would have loved a simple “next page”-button which wasn’t there, this page has one although it isn’t even necessary, because all 18 videos are listed on page 1.
So, what might hide behind that. What content will be found on page 2? Click on “2” and there you go: the same 18 videos again. No new content, no different content, just the same. And now if you invest some seconds in thinking you will get to know why it’s only 18 videos and not 22. It’s simple, because the four missing videos are those which are shown as the “latest” vids on the front page. This is – I feel like that – again not very user-friendly. My first thought about this was that they might have wanted it like that to get more clicks which means “more money”. This is, of course, a most ironic thought of all this and maybe not correct. The page problem btw goes for the images as well.
So, summed up, the concept of Snowfish is quite remarkable, it’s for those artists, who need every Cent they can get. But the implentation is…. simply bad, especially considering the fact that this page is online since June or July 2009 already and still there are so many mistakes around. The question is: what happened since then? I truly think that the creators of this page must invest more money and more work to make it more user-friendly and less messy. This page cannot keep up with social networks like Facebook or YouTube at the moment. The videos come as a stream, so every user with a really slow internet connection (and yes, there are still some around) don’t have the chance to watch the stuff. On YouTube you can just cache the video and watch it when it’s finished. So, our Swedish Snowfishs need to think about another solution here.
Another thing is that users can leave comments on the front page. The more comments you have, the shorter the scrollbar gets, the longer you must scroll down, the bigger the page becomes. Same here: not everything MySpace did works.
And if you feel the urge to share your opinion about Snowfish with other users you won’t get far. There actually is a forum, but if you want to go there, all you can read at the moment (1.46 pm CET) is this:
An error has occurred.
For detailed error information, please see the HTML source code, and contact the forum Administrator.
Error while executing SSO actions: java.lang.NullPointerException
Count me in, I’d sign this. 😛
I sign this, too. Great blog entry and sooo true. The fish doesn’t swim trough the snow. And I’m one of the unlucky people with a slow internet connection – unable to watch the videos…
I’m agree, I have seen everything you write in this post. When I watch a video, and problems start because low connection, I have to put it in “pause” and wait few minutes… then it works. So try this! I know it is an awful situation…
And errors with upoads, and… in the home page I recieve all feed of people I don’t know at all… I investigated about this, I rummaged through in settings, and many things in the left menu of “My home”, filters and others… without results, I could not fix this.
But just now, minutes ago, I found the reasons of that feed… we are forced to recieve feed of artists of that “Melodifestivalen 2010” (check the mean menu, “Melodifestivalen” with a yellow star). I checked that tab, and I found all the people who appear in “my home” feed… reasons?? I am not sure, but when I was reading this blog I found the possible answer: Click + money for the site and Melodifestivalen 2010. And sadly, we have not options in “settings” for not see this spam feed.
According to the Snowfish welcome-email; If you don’t want to receive feeds of artists of “Melodifestivalen 2010? you can easily remove them by clicking on the “Follow” link from My Home. http://snowfish.com/myHome/following/
Good luck!
The same here. I thought I should take some time to see what it’s all about before I give any comment. So I tried to handle this site and wanted to see if there is any order or whatsoever which I just had to find out.
I tried really hard just to realize, that there simply is nothing that makes it easier to handle this page. The opposite was the case. The more I tried , the more confusing it got.
I experienced the same as you, Kirsten, and I think you wrote a great entry about it. It’s just the truth and also objective. Great work!! Sure, the concept is good, but there has to happen a lot until it’s worth comming back… unfortunately. And of course, a big aspect as well, not everybody can watch it. Too bad 🙁
Great post. What I love about roxetteblog.com is that anyone can post what they want, even with a great deal of criticism. It’s no wonder so many people stopped reading TDR.
My take on snowfish: the site is really confusing and not user friendly at all. I noticed the problem with the number of videos and pictures. The streaming videos are probably what frustrates me the most, since everytime that you hit play it will stream the content again. Also, since snowfish.com is not as popular and known as youtube.com, the server is blocked from many locations since it’s not considered “safe”. Eg, the proxy configuration at the company I work for allows you see videos from youttube but not from snowfish.
What unites us at RoxetteBlog is our love and support for Roxette. But that doesn’t have to include every step they do. As human beings they’re not free from mistakes after all. 😉
Funny thing about Snowfish is: You can embedd Youtube videos! Saw it at the Alcazar page.
Well written post Kirsten, I’ve had a little look at Snowfish but it’s really something I am not keen on, I didn’t know about it properly until I read this post. What put me off was the whole having to join something else to post comments on videos, I just don’t have the time, these days I need to spend less time online not more but I am still very curious to see what Roxette are up to in the studio. I did try to stream the videos but they are really slow for me compared to YouTube, I’m on a slow internet connection where I am because I’m ages from the nearest exchange! I’m thinking soon to upgrade to cable broadband now I’ve sorted out a choice of uni and am not moving for a much faster BB service! For now I’ll stream the videos but there will be no comments from me because I don’t want to register for the site! I hope Per would go back to putting them on YouTube!
The whole Snowfish is one big mistake.
Well written article indeed! It’s true that the site offers a good opportunity for not (yet) well known artists to make a little extra money. On the other hand I find it quite odd, that you, at least the way the site is used by Per, make money with promotional work. Every other entrepreneur has to invest into customer acquisition, while Per is making profit with it. It’s a quite twisted strategy and I find it inacceptable for someone who’s well established and doesn’t depend on it.
It wouldn’t be as bad, if at least everyone who’s interested were given the chance to check the uploaded stuff out through the additional use of other sites with better connectivity. As Per, in spite of several complaints, doesn’t do that, it’s obvious that the main motivation behind him staying with Snowfish is a farther-reaching involvement in the business. Therefore he wants to promote it as much as possible.
I’ve said it before & I’ll say it again: everyone who wants to achieve a re-inclusion of youtube should ignore Snowfish completely – I’m 90% convinced that there’s no other way in changing Mr. Gessle’s mind. Might be too late for that though. I for one continue my refusal to visit this annoying platform.
Great work Kiwein! Thank you!
This sums it up perfectly!!!
Please Per, read it carefully !
Totally agree Kiwein!!!
The site is a mess & I don’t want another site I have to get used too! I’m like Alison I need to spend less time on the net & more time on important things in my life. It’s also a nightmare trying to watch the videos. My connection isn’t a slow one (it’s not fast either) but it still constantly stops so i basically want to put my fist through the screen instead of enjoying the videos!!! Then to make it worse it just streams it again so now I have to pause it as I go wait….watch a bit…pause it again SO annoying!!! Go back to You Tube Per, PLEASE!!!!
It seems as Snowfish have fixed the things mentioned in this blogpost :=) At least the things illustrated with a picture.
Yes, I have the same impression. I guess someone sent them the link to my article. 😛 Well, good for us and really great that they react on a blog post THAT fast.
And, of course – my article was not meant to be “rude”, I just wanted to point out why so many people dislike the site in first place. That the videos are streamed is in my opinion the worst “bug” of them all. We are just so spoiled because we got the videos on YouTube for nearly a year and everyone could watch them – now a lot of people can’t anymore if not other fans help them out. So much for “user-friendliness”. Unfortunately most countries in the world don’t provide as fast internet connections as Sweden does.
do we get a consultant or Quality Assurance fee for futher reports? 😉
To be fair, I’d update the article or write another one. We have to be grateful! 😛
PS. Log-In problems again…
I would – but I am moving tomorrow and still have tons of things to do and no internet in my new flat. I can do next week when no one else has done then.
PS: Same here, log-in problems again..