Common Craft Blog
Please Help Us Break In Common Craft's New Digs
By leelefever on July 28, 2008 - 6:54pm
This evening we've taken the wraps off the new CommonCraft.com and we'd love your feedback and help.
The biggest change is the new and improved video Store, which is fashioned after the shopping experience on sites like NetFlix. As I've said before, we see the Store as the centerpiece of our future business and we're so excited to have a foundation on which we can build.
To go with the new Store, we've made a video (below) that explains the way our video licensing works. "Common Craft Licensing in Plain English" also appears on the Store's front page.
Share this video using this code:
You'll also see that the site has a similar but improved interface.
We'd love your help!
With Reporting Problems...
As you know, we don't have "testers" or "QA professionals." If you see anything unexpected or erroneous, please do report it. You can leave a comment here or contact us.
With Building Awareness...
We've heard positive feedback from Store customers and we're very confident in our product, but awareness remains as our biggest challenge. People know the videos, but few understand that we offer them for licensed use in the workplace.
This is where you can help. We would be forever indebted if you could help us spread the word. The next time you talk to someone who says "I need an easy way to teach people at my company about social media", you might mention our Store. Of course, blog posts and tweets help too. :)
Ultimately, our potential rides on the Store's success. As it succeeds, we can devote more and more of our time to creating a growing library videos that are useful for non-commercial purposes on the Web and licensed use in the workplace.
I bought licenses for a couple of videos
I've used them in a few presentations, and as I expected, they've been very well received. Plus, they give me a nice three or four minute break in the middle of my talk. And, of course, they spare me from explaining what the heck RSS is for the 800th time.
I'm not sure I'd have included ratings with the videos in the stores. I'd imagine people come looking for specific topics and/or because they've seen the videos elsewhere. Plus, there's already independent ratings on YouTube and other video sites.
And even if all the videos get rightfully rated as 4 to 5 out of 5, you're still going to have some looking less attractive than others.
Mind you, the whole rating thing works pretty well for Amazon, so what do I know?
Keep up the Great Work
I love the work you do. Your videos are amazingly simple, yet informative.
Videos for teachers
I just met one of your videos today while working on a PBWiki on-line training wiki site for teachers. I went right to your website and then sent the link to the Director of Technology at my little public school district. There are thousands and thousands of teachers who would benefit from your videos and gain the knowledge and confidence to begin using social networking tools in classes and with students for teaching and learning purposes. (I'm still trying to figure out the differences between making a blog and making a wiki page for a class website for my high school Spanish students.) There are huge networks of school technology directors and coaches whose job it is to support us teachers with training like what you offer. I don't know how many of them can afford to put your site license into an annual budget, so most I think would share the free versions. Maybe if you had a modest education (different from the corporate business) licence, more would be able to pay, and you'd get at least something back for your wonderful contribution to the world of teachers.