African Short Film VoD platform comes to life in record time! Thanks to TechCabal Radar

Like the website and like the bromance that has resulted from this platform. I’d like to see more of this than the unnecessary drama :slightly_smiling:.

As you continue to add more videos could you consider perhaps hyperlinking the film maker’s name so that you can easily see a list of all the videos from that particular person?

If you don’t WANT to force people to sign up, you can think about below:

When people click like, suggest some pictures for them to identify to know if they are robot or not. You can also show one like button and hide another one and bot will always look out for like button; whenever it clicks both the visible like button and the hidden one, you know it is a robot.You can also measure the time taken to click like and click suggested images,if it is too fast, you know it is a bot… I don’t say these are perfect… but use them as foundation to develop viable techniques…" IT IS POSSIBLE TO BREAK THE JINX" if only you don’t want to force users to sign up…cheers

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Congrats for your launch.

Like every community and content-driven platform, we always have “a chicken and egg problem” In this case, Users will come when there are content and content producers will come when users views exist.

I checked out http://votd.tv/ that @FatherMerry pointed out. After checking their website, I noted some recommendations that might help you scale usage. Seems usage is also a major concern for @PapaOlabode

Below are my thought:

1. The video display (on web) for the each movies is small. I will like a screen view almost as big as Votd.tv

2. The growth of the platform will be driven by content. I noticed Votd.TV gives daily awards to short clips submitted. This way they have flipped the coin on content generation to their audience. I am not a subject matter specialist on African short clips; so I don’t know the market size of the creators: but I know you need to woo them in (and even amateurs) by answering this question for them: What Is In It For Me . A weekly award for shortfilm might be the answer. While this might burn your pocket for a while, it will help you to get initial traction and eyeballs to the site. To win your weekly competition, each entry will be judged on number of views and engagements it gathered.

3. Introduce “brands” into the plot.

Here is one of the videos I watched on Vidt.tv: http://votd.tv/nominees/1618/chocolate-hen. It is actually an “ad” for ASDA.

So, here is my idea in its original form (similar to 2 above): Run a contest on the platform asking contributors to create a short story with insertions from a particular brand (lets say GLO) and then you allow them to send traffic to their videos so that the videos with the highest engagement gets to win something.

This way, you help the brand to get exposure in a non-traditional way, you promote your platform and creators’ shortfilms are remunerated. WIN-WIN-WIN

4… To followup on @Ayobami_Ogundiran’s recommendations. You can allow social login or TRY this idea. When someone clicks “like” tell them to open an account so that their like will be visible on the platform. Medium.com has this intuitive step when you want to comment or “love” a post.

These are my 2 “growth hacking” cents in addition to all the good stuffs from @PapaOlabode, @FatherMerry, @xolubi, @Tola , @johne and @Ayobami_Ogundiran. The truth is that it is rare for the first 4 folks to be on the same vertical on issues on Radar. You guys must be lucky since you have them on the same side :slightly_smiling:

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Great option @Ayobami_Ogundiran its effectively using a captcha. This is great for blocking bots, however it wouldn’t stop a human from mashing the like button several times. I could store a cookie which disables the like button after one click but what if your brother uses your laptop to watch the same film and wants to like it too? Also security by cookie is an oxymoron.

Great idea though!

Great comments @spokentwice, thanks a lot for the comments/recommendations. @Oluwatobi_Ogunwande is actively working on things like strategy, monetization, and figuring out how to incentivize content creators to come onto the platform. We are definitely intrigued by the “periodic contest” angle.

There is a functional reason for why the video player isn’t very large. This is so that viewers can still see other video recommendations in the cut, without scrolling. This is necessary for better user engagement. If we wan’t to make the video player larger, we would have to experiment with placing video recommendations on a column to the right, beside the video player (similar to YouTube and Viddsee).

Thanks again!

I see you point, but you can workaround this to some extent: When a device visit your website , identify it by any reasonably possible means such as using cookie or any other means; you don’t have to disable the like button. Just match the visiting device with it identity stored and prompt that someone else has liked the same video with the same device but ask whether the user wants to like as a new person. If yes, allow it. If the same device likes the same video three times disallow such action thereafter and ask the owner to signup with Facebook. Period, right?

Where is share button? Isn’t it that the videos are confidential or what?

Congratulations! What an impressive concept and very much needed. Looking forward to seeing more. :blush::blush:

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@Ayobami_Ogundiran you don’t seem to understand what @johne is trying to achieve by making sure you signup before you like a video, imagine a situation where you don’t need to signup to like a video, you end up having one person like a video more than once; this will make the entire system not credible. and about tying the likes to cookies, first you know cookies are not reliable, also what happens if i get to watch a movie from a public computer, likes it and some other person comes to view the same clip with it, also cookies can be deleted you know. if you really like a product you just have to signup to use it. i think the best thing he should do in this regards is probably add oAuth authentication as someone pointed out earlier. in that way people wouldn’t need to really re-enter login details.

NB: He isn’t even trying to solve a Bot problem at this point, it about human who might want to cause mischief, coupled with a nice user Xperience

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Nice!! I have a couple of short films I would like to submit myself. I’ll be sending you an email soon!

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Having people sign up is a good move in my opinion cos it will help you have data that will be valuable to advertisers wen they come calling.