New Collab Search Engine --> Needs Your Feedback!

[Channel Pages]

We recently launched ChannelPages.com to give YouTubers an easier way to find each other (and be found) for collaborations to grow, and we'd love to get your honest feedback so we can keep improving it.

While we've been thrilled by the flood of channels (large and small) already signed up and giving us some great general feedback, there's a few specific things we're interested in knowing:

- Our Homepage (is the value to you clear? is the signup process easy? what could make it better?)
- Your Channel Profile (do you like the layout? what other info would you want to see when finding channels to collab with?)
- Search (were the results relevant? did you connect with anyone?)
- Features (what new things you'd like to see added? what features should we remove?)

Though our team has a ton of experience in Audience CRM software (we built FanBridge) and we'd like to think that we got off to a great start with ChannelPages.com, we also know that ultimately it's all of you that need to feel like it actually makes your lives easier and adds value.

Thanks for any feedback - we're standing by to improve for you.

- Team Channel Pages

This post has been pre-approved by the YTtalk Staff.

 

[Styxie]

Hah actually heard about this a little while ago and was considering trying it out, thanks for the reminder.

 

[Wreckless Eating]

I signed up recently. You should make a traditional log in instead of one that has to connect with a google account, as that makes it difficult for multiple people to access the account unless they have access to youtube channel's login info.

I find the word cloud rather useless and inaccurate for my channel. Monthly stats are way off as well-they don't match the analytics. I'd like to see locations for each channel on the profile pages-most of our collaborations are done in person and it makes life easier if I know where they are located without having to contact them first.

You may also want to add some sort of section where channels can say what brands/companies they've worked with before-that way advertisers who are looking for channels with a proven track record can zero in on the candidates without contacting them first.

 

[ProductionPeople1]

Signed up!

 

[Douglas MacKrell]

Well, I just joined a few minutes ago - and I do have some suggestions.

Your start up is a little heavy handed. You ask for access to our accounts (including management) and ask to start branding yourself and your services across every video and our channel about page BEFORE we've even had a chance to experience anything your services have to offer.

When I was asked to define my channel, I was surprised to see that simple things like "Vlog" weren't available as choices - and Comedy is limited to "Comedy Films" and "Live Comedy" I would make that far more robust, or indicate that you can add your own tags.

Your automatic grabbing of a handful of my statistics isn't really reflective of my current body of work. Those reflect my ENTIRE 6 YEARS on YouTube, and so when you broadcast publicly that I upload about 4 videos per month - when that actual number for the last few years is roughly 10-12 - I fear that some of these stats that you publically show do me a greater disservice than aid - especially with all the hard work I'm pouring into my overall channel.

Lastly, that word cloud is complete garbage. I would get rid of that ASAP.

So in summation: don't be so grabby up front, let the user choose what they want to share, and - seriously... get that ugly a** word cloud off my page. If you're hurting for content, integrate the channel banner into the page design or something.

 

[Channel Pages]

I signed up recently. You should make a traditional log in instead of one that has to connect with a google account, as that makes it difficult for multiple people to access the account unless they have access to youtube channel's login info.

This is a helpful suggestion, though we would also want to balance it with concerns about security (sharing passwords). A question for you: If we integrated with the Google+ sign in (which allows you to have up to 50 managers of your channel, each via their own G+ account), would that help alleviate the issue you mention? Or no, because you don't use that specific YouTube/G+ feature?

I find the word cloud rather useless and inaccurate for my channel. Monthly stats are way off as well-they don't match the analytics.

We know the word cloud isn't perfect and are working at making it more helpful and representative of your channel. If you could create the word cloud yourself, what are the top 10-20 words you would pick? (we can then use that to compare against the ones we are pulling for your channel). For the monthly stats, we are pushing some new code by eod Monday that will fix a bug in the calculation. If you wouldn't mind, it would be great to hear from you after then if you feel they are more accurate. That said, for the monthly view count, we are using the average of the last six months of view data for your channel, as we feel this is a better representation of monthly viewership than an all-time average. If you disagree, we'd love to hear your thoughts on what you think would be a better way to do this calculation.

I'd like to see locations for each channel on the profile pages-most of our collaborations are done in person and it makes life easier if I know where they are located without having to contact them first.

AWESOME idea. As long as YouTubers would feel comfortable sharing this info (maybe at a city level), this could be a great addition to profiles.

You may also want to add some sort of section where channels can say what brands/companies they've worked with before-that way advertisers who are looking for channels with a proven track record can zero in on the candidates without contacting them first.

Interesting suggestion. Do you feel this would be unfair to those who have no big-brand experience? Also, does past work with a brand always mean it was a successful engagement? We also want to be careful about making channels fill out a ton of info upfront, but I understand what you are getting at here.

Thanks again for this great feedback![DOUBLEPOST=1380928590,1380927761][/DOUBLEPOST]

Your start up is a little heavy handed. You ask for access to our accounts (including management) and ask to start branding yourself and your services across every video and our channel about page BEFORE we've even had a chance to experience anything your services have to offer.

Thanks for sharing this feedback Douglas, I will take it back to the team and see if anything can be done on the permissions front. We just rolled out search capabilities to everyone (and they will be made fully public in the near future) so you will be able to experience the platform (ie do searches and find relevant channels) and find value before we ask for an authorization, so hopefully that will help alleviate the feeling of us asking for a lot from you before providing value back. In terms of the branding option (adding Channel Pages links to your videos/channel), we specifically make that opt-in (not opt-out) so it is something you have to want to do rather than us pushing it on you. No problem if you don't want it, but we have found that it helps increase traffic back to your Channel Pages profile page.

When I was asked to define my channel, I was surprised to see that simple things like "Vlog" weren't available as choices - and Comedy is limited to "Comedy Films" and "Live Comedy" I would make that far more robust, or indicate that you can add your own tags.

We know the categories for channels can definitely be expanded, and we are working on a way to allow people to add suggestions while still keeping the data clean so it can be searchable. In terms of the Comedy section, what Comedy-related categories would you like to see us add? For "vlog" we debated this one internally and decided not to include it (at least initially) as it talks about the style of content presentation, but otherwise isn't super informative for what the content actually is. If you were picking 2-3 categories to best describe your channel's content, would "vlog" be one of them? or would you pick others? We'd love to know.

Your automatic grabbing of a handful of my statistics isn't really reflective of my current body of work. Those reflect my ENTIRE 6 YEARS on YouTube, and so when you broadcast publicly that I upload about 4 videos per month - when that actual number for the last few years is roughly 10-12 - I fear that some of these stats that you publically show do me a greater disservice than aid - especially with all the hard work I'm pouring into my overall channel.

I will double check, but for the monthly averages, I believe we are only looking at the last six months of data, as we felt that would be the best indication of the current status of the channel (rather than an all-time average). Would you suggest we do an all-time average? or is there something in the middle? Other than the avg. videos uploaded per month, are there other ones you feel do a strong disservice to you?

Lastly, that word cloud is complete garbage. I would get rid of that ASAP.

Is there anything you would suggest that would make it more valuable? The aim was to show specific keywords that help describe common topics for your channel if someone only had a few seconds to get an understanding of the type of stuff the channel covers. We'd love any feedback here as we know it can be better.

So in summation: don't be so grabby up front, let the user choose what they want to share, and - seriously... get that ugly a** word cloud off my page. If you're hurting for content, integrate the channel banner into the page design or something.

Thank you again for this feedback, it is definitely really helpful for our team.

 

[Douglas MacKrell]

This is a helpful suggestion, though we would also want to balance it with concerns about security (sharing passwords). A question for you: If we integrated with the Google+ sign in (which allows you to have up to 50 managers of your channel, each via their own G+ account), would that help alleviate the issue you mention? Or no, because you don't use that specific YouTube/G+ feature?



We know the word cloud isn't perfect and are working at making it more helpful and representative of your channel. If you could create the word cloud yourself, what are the top 10-20 words you would pick? (we can then use that to compare against the ones we are pulling for your channel). For the monthly stats, we are pushing some new code by eod Monday that will fix a bug in the calculation. If you wouldn't mind, it would be great to hear from you after then if you feel they are more accurate. That said, for the monthly view count, we are using the average of the last six months of view data for your channel, as we feel this is a better representation of monthly viewership than an all-time average. If you disagree, we'd love to hear your thoughts on what you think would be a better way to do this calculation.



AWESOME idea. As long as YouTubers would feel comfortable sharing this info (maybe at a city level), this could be a great addition to profiles.



Interesting suggestion. Do you feel this would be unfair to those who have no big-brand experience? Also, does past work with a brand always mean it was a successful engagement? We also want to be careful about making channels fill out a ton of info upfront, but I understand what you are getting at here.

Thanks again for this great feedback![DOUBLEPOST=1380928590,1380927761][/DOUBLEPOST]

Thanks for sharing this feedback Douglas, I will take it back to the team and see if anything can be done on the permissions front. We just rolled out search capabilities to everyone (and they will be made fully public in the near future) so you will be able to experience the platform (ie do searches and find relevant channels) and find value before we ask for an authorization, so hopefully that will help alleviate the feeling of us asking for a lot from you before providing value back. In terms of the branding option (adding Channel Pages links to your videos/channel), we specifically make that opt-in (not opt-out) so it is something you have to want to do rather than us pushing it on you. No problem if you don't want it, but we have found that it helps increase traffic back to your Channel Pages profile page.



We know the categories for channels can definitely be expanded, and we are working on a way to allow people to add suggestions while still keeping the data clean so it can be searchable. In terms of the Comedy section, what Comedy-related categories would you like to see us add? For "vlog" we debated this one internally and decided not to include it (at least initially) as it talks about the style of content presentation, but otherwise isn't super informative for what the content actually is. If you were picking 2-3 categories to best describe your channel's content, would "vlog" be one of them? or would you pick others? We'd love to know.



I will double check, but for the monthly averages, I believe we are only looking at the last six months of data, as we felt that would be the best indication of the current status of the channel (rather than an all-time average). Would you suggest we do an all-time average? or is there something in the middle? Other than the avg. videos uploaded per month, are there other ones you feel do a strong disservice to you?



Is there anything you would suggest that would make it more valuable? The aim was to show specific keywords that help describe common topics for your channel if someone only had a few seconds to get an understanding of the type of stuff the channel covers. We'd love any feedback here as we know it can be better.



Thank you again for this feedback, it is definitely really helpful for our team.

Perhaps it's because I've seen it so standardized across other social media areas - that the additional qualifier of either "films" or "live" gives the impression that you are either making comedy shorts or features on your channel or performing stand-up comedy. Granted, my show Internet After Dark is an odd niche - in part a spoof of Men's Lifestyle (mature) shows like Playboy Penthouse and Playboy After Dark, and very much in the vein of personality-driven parody/satire shows like Night Stand with d**k Dietrick and The Colbert Report.

I know I'm the outlier in this scenario - but being able to attach a secondary qualifier to my show that lets people know that my show is a lampoon of a format may help.

Another way to help would be the replacement of the word cloud with a description box. I know some folks are daunted by a blank slate - and for them you can leave open the option of a word cloud - but for example, I have a unified blurb that I use to quickly describe my show:

LIVE from his luxurious NY apartment, videomaker, sexpro, Internetologist, and man's man, Douglas MacKrell, hosts Internet After Dark - a sexy fireside chat for the digital age.

The golden voiced and smoking jacket clad host, guides the audience daily through a talking point with a focus on sexual and mature themes. Shows range from reviews, tutorials, Q and A, recaps, songs, interviews, and opinion editorials. IAD evokes a digital 80's late-night aesthetic, and is presented three to four times a week in YouTube;s vlog format like Grace Helbig or Hannah Hart.

As you can see, I included "Vlog" as a qualifier because I feel like it's shorthand for one-man-band "someone talking to a camera on a tripod" set ups. It's a way to get across to potential collaborators or sponsors that I can provide both quality AND speed. Two of the most valued aspects of video production.

As for my stats being public - I'm just not a fan. I feel like those numbers don't reflect the work I'm putting in now and that - worse yet - they give tools to sponsors to easily sort and neglect my work. Stats remove my humanity and any merit my work may have and boil it down to a rank. If you can't slim the range down to 30 day chunks, I'd suggest allowing users to hide that information from both visitors AND sponsors.

I'll share my subscriber count. I'll share my total monthly views. I'll even share my average views per video (though I'd gladly swap that for the number of views on my most popular upload). The rest I feel impact me negatively in light of my current growth.

 

[Tipsy Tricks]

Having the FAQ segmented into separate articles makes navigating them difficult. I'd prefer to see them all in one page, so I can skim around the text, or at least keep the navigation tree a little more unified page to page.

 

[Channel Pages]

Having the FAQ segmented into separate articles makes navigating them difficult. I'd prefer to see them all in one page, so I can skim around the text, or at least keep the navigation tree a little more unified page to page.

Good idea. Was there a specific question or topic you were looking for in general?[DOUBLEPOST=1381241825,1381241226][/DOUBLEPOST]

Perhaps it's because I've seen it so standardized across other social media areas - that the additional qualifier of either "films" or "live" gives the impression that you are either making comedy shorts or features on your channel or performing stand-up comedy. Granted, my show Internet After Dark is an odd niche - in part a spoof of Men's Lifestyle (mature) shows like Playboy Penthouse and Playboy After Dark, and very much in the vein of personality-driven parody/satire shows like Night Stand with d**k Dietrick and The Colbert Report.

I know I'm the outlier in this scenario - but being able to attach a secondary qualifier to my show that lets people know that my show is a lampoon of a format may help.

Right, we understand the situation here. Let us think on the best way to handle spoofs/parodies.

Another way to help would be the replacement of the word cloud with a description box. I know some folks are daunted by a blank slate - and for them you can leave open the option of a word cloud - but for example, I have a unified blurb that I use to quickly describe my show

Do you think this would be a completely new description unique to Channel Pages? Or is this something we could pull from a Channel's 'About' description on YouTube? (to make it easier so people didn't have to retype)

As you can see, I included "Vlog" as a qualifier because I feel like it's shorthand for one-man-band "someone talking to a camera on a tripod" set ups. It's a way to get across to potential collaborators or sponsors that I can provide both quality AND speed. Two of the most valued aspects of video production.

Describing the style/format of the videos is a good idea. We will think on the best way to do this, but vlog would definitely be one of them.

As for my stats being public - I'm just not a fan. I feel like those numbers don't reflect the work I'm putting in now and that - worse yet - they give tools to sponsors to easily sort and neglect my work. Stats remove my humanity and any merit my work may have and boil it down to a rank. If you can't slim the range down to 30 day chunks, I'd suggest allowing users to hide that information from both visitors AND sponsors.

I'll share my subscriber count. I'll share my total monthly views. I'll even share my average views per video (though I'd gladly swap that for the number of views on my most popular upload). The rest I feel impact me negatively in light of my current growth.

We understand your concern here, though there would be far less value to a potential sponsor or collaborator if the majority of a channel's stats were hidden. It is this previously unavailable insight into a channel's audience and focus that can open a lot of doors on the collab or sponsor side. In terms of sponsors, they aren't always looking for the biggest channels. Sometimes they look for channels who are very focused on a topic, and who have aggregated a focused, strong audience (even if that audience isn't huge), as that can be more effective for them than mass advertising.

 

[Tipsy Tricks]

Good idea. Was there a specific question or topic you were looking for in general?

I just wanted to know more about your service, I didn't have a specific question, I just wanted to read through your content and get a better feel, but your design made that a little difficult.