EVERYBODY NEW Don't believe me? Then you haven't seen the right tutorials. Since Day 1, the landing page for Dropbox has had a nice, short video about why you should bother with Dropbox. Granted - Dropbox is more of a commitment than Hubski. You get more real-world functionality out of it. So a 2-minute video? Probably not. That's why I said 30 seconds. So tutorials are a bad idea, but if they were a good idea, they already exist, but they should probably be redone except for the fact that they're a bad idea. The initial Hubski user experience in a nutshell, ladies and gentlemen. IN MY OPINION A new user should, upon creating their account, be taken to the comments section of whatever post they were looking at when they signed up. They should be auto-subscribed to the user that posted that post and whatever tags that post has been tagged with. Their top bar should be a "training mode" bar that gives useful hovertext for what every icon does and suggest they click on their name to set things up. The only tags they should be subscribed to are the ones previously mentioned and "#Imnewhere" (which is what Diaspora recommended - I thought it was a good idea, albeit poorly implemented). #Imnewhere should have certain "sticky" posts to get people acquainted with the navigation while using the navigation. As it is now, Hubski suggests following "popular" users and "popular" tags - which has an exponential effect. Keep that up and this place is going to permanently ensconce the popular users now as the popular users forever. Instead, point people to the top bar and suggest they browse around to find things that interest them. That's how you populate a "new" page. IN MY OPINION.Serious question, how many people are likely to click on a video tutorial?
By the way, I'm of the opinion that these tutorials are pretty shitty, and not optimally placed and could definitely be done in a better way.
This is a brilliant idea and will* should hopefully eliminate any and all "how do I use hubski" related posts. *just imagine this struck through I guessThe only tags they should be subscribed to are the ones previously mentioned and "#Imnewhere" (which is what Diaspora recommended - I thought it was a good idea, albeit poorly implemented). #Imnewhere should have certain "sticky" posts to get people acquainted with the navigation while using the navigation.
So tutorials are a bad idea, but if they were a good idea, they already exist, but they should probably be redone except for the fact that they're a bad idea. The initial Hubski user experience in a nutshell, ladies and gentlemen.
I think I may have been misunderstood. What I am saying is that a semblance of tutorial exists right now on Hubski. I think tutorials are an amazing idea, one that I've been championing. What I'm saying is that our current version is horrid. I like the idea of having an amazing tutorial, something simple and integrated in to the experience. This is something we are talking about behind the scenes. I am in no way opposed to making a tutorial video, I'm just not certain it's the most effective way to go about it. Trust me though, I'm Mr. Tutorial on team Hubski. -We all know there is a ton of room for improvement here.
As mk mentioned we have observed people (smart, capable people) use Hubski for the first time and it has been quite eye-opening.
I love your ideas regarding having a new user follow the initial tag and poster that brought them here. We have some ideas around the new user experience that will nix the "popular user" problem you pose. These are great suggestions and very timely, thank you. Re your first comment, we have to get these things squared away before we can really take the ball and run, no doubt about it. Thanks again.
The argument I had with first Chris Slowe, then Jeremy Edberg, then Erik Martin was that a "default" page is stupid and loads up all the terrible subreddits with chaff. I argued that every user's "default" page ought to be /r/help and that they should offer a quick and simple way to find things the user might like and make it easy to add. it was that "quick and simple way" that they tripped over. There is no useful subreddit discovery method on Reddit and probably never will be. They didn't build it in at the beginning, and it's too late to add one now.