12seconds.tv Struggles To Build on Early Successes in Adoption Phase Brad Schwarzenbach
The still fairly nascent channel 12seconds.tv has been profiled on the Tippingpoint Labs blog, speculated about, engaged with, advised, and applauded. Andrew Davis and I co-wrote a few of those posts. And since the last one, I’ll admit that I haven’t been back much to 12seconds.tv. Neither has Shaquille O’Neal, and that’s a bad sign.
Despite int
erface upgrades, a redesign, and a heavy focus on integration, 12seconds.tv is still working to build channel quality in the Adoption Phase of its life cycle.
Things to consider in adoption phase
If you’re a startup, there’s a lesson here. In the Adoption Phase, the main force acting toward the success of a channel, such as 12seconds.tv, is user engagement in the form of quality content creation. The main force acting toward a channel’s failure is the risk of attracting high-visibility exposure when the content quality (as an aggregate) is of little value.
This means that as a new content creation channel, 12seconds.tv must focus on encouraging higher quality content creation from a larger segment of their user base. They must encourage new users who have high-quality content elsewhere on the web to interact on their channel. They must help 12seconds users understand what is good content. This is not high quality content — and it’s from one of the founders of the channel.
The race for cross-channel integration
Apparently, my absence did not go unnoticed. I received an interesting and very candid email from co-founder Sol Lipman, outlining some of the upgrades they’ve recently made to the channel, and inviting me to contact him directly if I had any further suggestions. Here’s what’s new as outlined in his email:
- Complete redesign and real-time feeds
- Easy Login with Twitter and Facebook Connect Login
- Your videos now go into your Facebook Feed if you connect your accounts
- Twitter Sync — stay in sync with your Twitter friends using 12seconds.tv
- Twitter mentions and DMs in your feed — add video to your Twitter conversation
- Your followers can easily comment on your videos using their Twitter/Facebook login
Do you see a trend here?
Slow and steady wins this one
An unfortunate trend in emerging media channels is their race to integrate their channel’s content into other, more established channels like Facebook, MySpace, and Twitter. This can actually cause more harm than good to a channel in the early stages of its life cycle like 12seconds.tv.
You’re inviting more and more people to interact with 12seconds.tv where invariably, at this point, they discover content of little or no value. An integration with Facebook and Twitter should not be released until you’re well into the Gestation phase of your life cycle.
It’s true that during Gestation, building a new channel’s reach through embedding and integration will generate more awareness, and traffic will spike. Before that point, however, there’s too little high-quality content in the channel, and it will be deserted quickly by influencers in the bigger channels who are not getting any value from the flood of, “Hey just checking out this new channel” videos that are prevalent in the earliest stages of site growth.
Becoming the Twitter of video
I understand, though, the attraction of integration with the big-name social networks. The very short-form 12seconds video platform works best in a sort of question-and-answer format, where videos refer back to other videos. The channel leadership even implemented a creative “Daily Challenge” for 12seconds-ers to build discussion.
But still, in perusing the low-quality content that currently exists on the channel, it’s obvious that the earliest adopters are still struggling to find meaningful value from the content. And while many experiment with the channel, most don’t hang around for long.
This attrition will not stand
The first life cycle analysis of 12seconds.tv called out the quality content coming from the BinEndsWine channel. Well, he hasn’t posted a video in more than 8 months. The life cycle update post mentioned 12second Cocktails and their promising work, but they haven’t posted in two months. Even Shaq abandoned 12seconds after posting only three videos.
This is evidence that the engagement was low and the producers found little value for the content. The recent rising and falling in the channel’s traffic numbers indicate a lot of interest in the concept, but also a lack of engaging content.
The takeaway
Any new startup can watch and learn from the 12seconds.tv struggles. Focus on generating high-quality content in the first three phases of your life cycle. Integrate with third-party channels and applications only when there’s a high percentage of relevant, high-quality content being generated on the channel.
Category: Incubator Insights
Tagged: 12Seconds.tv, adoption phase, Content Quality, early adopters, video
8 Comments »
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I think you miss the point of 12seconds entirely. The point of 12seconds is to share video with your friends and family. The videos that “drive traffic” on YouTube, for instance, are not social videos – they are not made by people you know. For instance, my mother in law thought the video that you ridiculed (which was lame, fyi) was awesome content. For this reason, we will continue to drive towards social video, we’re not focused on “quality content.” Now, you might argue that short-form video or social video doesn’t drive traffic. But, saying that it’s about a lack of quality public content is a shocking misunderstanding of the space.
Sol,
I’m so glad you read our post. First of all, we’re really big fans of the 12Seconds.tv concept – we WANT to love it. We want it to succeed.
I’m not sure I missed the point of 12Seconds.tv. I understand that your vision was to create a channel on which people could update their family and friends. However, Twitter was founded on the same principle and the channels content had to evolve to actually be successful.
I’m glad your Mother-in-law loved the video of your daughter, I think this means that I’m most certainly not your audience.
I think you may have missunderstood what we mean as far as quality content. I don’t mean high-production value. I mean valuable to the entire community. That’s valuable. That’s high-quality.
I think short-form video/or social video is Genius! I think it CAN drive traffic.
Unfortunately, I have two dozen case studies of new media platforms (exactly like 12Seconds) that provide evidence that quality content (okay you define quality then) will actually garner the kind of explosive success I imagine you’re looking for.
Sol, I’ll keep checking in on 12Seconds.tv. But can you define what kind of content you believe makes 12Seconds.tv wonderful? Can you send me some links to the best content on 12seconds?
BTW, why isn’t Imogen Heap around anymore?
Thanks,
Drew
I agree with Sol’s mother-in-law — it’s an absolutely adorable clip of Sol’s daughter singing a gorgeous interpretation of the ABC song. I actually appreciate it on a lot of levels because of my fascination with very young children and their take on the world, because of my enjoyment of nascent musicality, and because I can imagine early childhood development scholars picking up on it as a great example of the initial stages of learning. Sol is right to celebrate it as a beautiful thing to share.
It’s ok that lots of folks won’t get it — it is a true gem anyway.
There was a little arm-wrestling about that example internally here at Tippingpoint Labs (ok, *I* arm-wrestled with the authors), and I think it’s too bad they didn’t select something a little more universally un-get-able.
The real insight of this post, imho, is that the adoption phase hasn’t yet reached a stickiness with some of the more universally get-able content. The interesting wine tips and very entertaining cocktails show makers (and easy-to-appreciate show makers like them) have come but gone. Perhaps their participation doesn’t continue because they need something from the platform or its community that they’re not getting. Somehow the platform makers need to cultivate the getting-it early adopters so there’s enough such activity to start a lively cross-pollination of ideas and energy, which kicks in the gestation phase. The platform users are the ones who figure out what it’s best used for.
In closing, I doubt I will ever forget Sol’s daughter’s rendition of the ABCs. I love it!
Anita,
I knew you’d be so happy Sol called us out on Marlon’s video. I guess Sol’s right. That’s quality content. :)
Thanks so much for your comment. It’s nice to see you chiming in!
You should do it more often!
- Drew
I appreciate your responses. However, I still think you guys are a little off. Twitter is not a template for every company. While Twitter had a lot of mainstream adoption (for a period) driven by celebrities, the engine is powered by normal people sharing moments of their life. Twitter is not dependent on celebs (which is how you are defining ‘quality content’ as it turns out) to succeed. However, it’s growth was accelerated by celebs. The growth of Facebook was not because of celebrities or ‘quality content.’ In fact, I believe celebs are, in some ways, not good for our community. It creates statistical short term growth but if you do cohort analysis you’ll see the growth during celebrity driven phases is often empty as people are just there to check out a celeb not participate. Soon you will see the same is true for Twitter. How many people joined Twitter during the Oprah phase? How many of them are still using Twitter? How many of them actually tweeted more than once? Did this huge statistical growth during a short period of time destroy an entire market segment for Twitter as the Oprah demo tried it, didn’t get it and never went back? Did Twitter blow their chance with that demo?
We’re in the process of changing what we do and focusing on social video applications across your existing social graph. So, if you see some dips it’s actually because we’re turning the ship and it’s taking a bit of time. Expect 12seconds to surprise you in the coming months.
Finally, I like you guys but I think it was a poor choice to target my son Marlon (he has long hair, not his fault) as an example of low quality video.
Quality content is in the eye of the beholder. Again, it’s a miscalculation to think that every social network requires celebrities (which is how YOU defined quality content) to thrive. It’s an over-simplification that I would avoid because it’s not true (Facebook).
Sol,
Thanks again for chiming in.
We may be a little off and I’m sorry if it seems like we’re picking on your son. We didn’t mean to make it seem that way.
We’re not focused on Celebrities at all. It’s just easy to track them on platforms. It’s just a lot easier that saying “my friend Brooke isn’t on 12Seconds anymore either.”
Twitter’s growth actually was NOT accelerated by celebrities in the first three phases. It wasn’t until WELL into escalation that celebrities really pushed new adoption for the platform. The same goes for MySpace (back in the old days.) LA Fires and the Atlanta Gas Crisis changed the ‘quality’ of the content on Twitter…. that’s what led to it’s runaway success. (I didn’t say that by the way, Evan Williams does in a TED speech.)
I’m excited to see the New 12Seconds.tv! Can’t wait. The peaks and valleys are typical for any platform going through these early phases – so we’re not surprised at all. Quality content is subjective – but as Zach Klein founder of Vimeo and College Humor told me on Friday – you have to beat your core user base and early adopters over the head with the kind of content that will make the channel successful in the long run… otherwise you’ll have tons of crap and it’s too hard to find the gems.
Anyway, thanks again Sol for the pleasure of chatting (debating) this with you. We’re big fans of you and 12Seconds – and again – our targeting Marlon was unintentional. (That was my fault…)
Oops! That was particularly clumsy of me! My son, Eddy, had beautifully long hair at that age. (And at a later age.) Meant no offense atall.
Sol, Drew, Anita,
First of all, let me thank you for your spirited discussion about my post about 12seconds.tv. When writing for a blog, the ultimate hope is that people will read your stuff. And, you’ve certainly demonstrated that it has, indeed, been read. So thanks!
The point I’d like to drive home is this: Integration with other social media is important and beneficial to a channel. And the point I’d hoped to make in the post is that it’s too early for 12seconds.tv to put what seems like a heavy development focus on this integration when the channel is still so young.
The email Sol sent bulleted out 6 changes to the channel, 5 referenced Twitter or Facebook (heck, 2 of them referenced both!). Sol you’ve replied that there are many other improvements being made to the channel that weren’t outlined in the email you sent. This is excellent! Keep the channel innovations coming.
I’d like to echo Drew’s statements that I absolutely believe that the 12seconds platform is valuable and CAN succeed. The point remains that, from where I sit, I couldn’t find much value in the content on the channel. Now, perhaps I’m not what the target audience of 12seconds content; however, given the heavy focus on Twitter/Facebook integration (2 channels on which I am a heavy user), I think I am.
For me, all of this comes back to the What Now factor that we’ve talked about so much here at the Tippingpoint. If a channel spreads its wings too early – if it shoots for the moon and tries to sell the platform technology BEFORE the channel itself – it makes a bad first impression. And, sadly, for many social media sites, they only get one impression. If someone doesn’t like what they see right off the bat, few will return. Only if a first-time user GETS something out of the channel will they want to put something back INTO it.
Thanks again for all the valuable insight. I will definitely continue to watch the channel. I hope that the frequent mention of it on our blog indicates that I am hopeful and interested.