Note From Colin - THURSDAY Exercise

Hi guys,

Thanks to all for the posts onto the experimental blog. The exercise has now ended, and I think has been a great success.

Looking at these posts, my feeling is that we can produce a provocative and absorbing read as well as linking to the best videos of the day. Once the site launches, the feel of the site will be improved by its design and navigation, which I hope to share with you in the near future. I pointed the president of Future US to the blog and he made some very enthusiastic noises, which is always a plus.

I've received some comments and questions from a few of you. One remarked that the site needs to avoid degenerating into some collection of 'hilarious' clips of people falling off things, and this was a point well made. There's nothing wrong with those vids, which we've assigned a "Stupid' section to; but this site is mostly about culture and art and news.

There was another question about the timeliness of videos, which is absolutely essential. Gloob.TV is about new videos, primarily. It is also about footage that our readers have probably not seen before, even if it's older. What it emphatically is not about are vids that have been doing the rounds for days or weeks. Nothing will ruin our credibility more than posting as new, vids that our readers have already seen.

The question is...how much good content is out there on any particular day?

I want us to find that out this coming THURSDAY.

We will run a 24 hour trial run posting videos onto the Blog that are no more than 24 hours old, at the point of posting. This exercise will begin at 6am Eastern and will continue until 6am Friday.

I'd like to hear from you if you absolutely cannot take part in this exercise; I'm hoping to have at least a dozen writers available for this.

There will be no upper limit on the number of posts you can make that day. I will probably assign some of you to particular content areas (e.g. TV, Games, Sports). I'll be interested in following up with you about your experience that day. How difficult was it to find content etc?

So please let me know if you are not available this Thursday. (If you've already told me you're not available this week, don't worry about it.)

Also, feel free to send me your comments or questions.

Just to reiterate, Gloob.TV will not have a strict 'only brand new vids' rule, but the experiment on Thursday must ONLY include videos that are no more than a day old.