History of VideoSift Part II
I'm writing a series of blog posts about the history of VideoSift. This is Part II, but you can go back and read Prelude to a Sift and then Part I.
Launched from its slightly murky beginnings, the new VideoSift community was thriving in the first few months of 2006. Traffic was growing and more importantly, all kinds of people were pitching their online tents at Videosift - making it their web home.
@ant who worked within Blues News was sending us regular new visitors and many of those people were hanging around to submit more content - which in turn brought more people in from Google searches, blogs and other corners of the net. In a span of only a few months, we launched Sift Talk, tried out a “Sift Off”, and had our first big “Siftquisition”. The culture of VideoSift was evolving.
I got to know @lucky760 as a Sifter about midway through that first year. He helped us out with ajax scripting and some coding to improve how Siftbot works. Before his involvement, Siftbot invocations were all actioned once a day, on a schedule – all at the same time. It seems impossible now. I was so impressed by Lucky’s code wizardry and quick turnaround on everything that he soon became part of the small VideoSift dev team. In those golden months there was a lot of other community involvement as well. @ender worked with us to make a Polish VideoSift at VideoSift.pl (now defunct). It made a big splash and even got on the national Polish news.
As we grew, we had to expand the number of servers more than once. I really didn’t know how big we were going to be. Were we Digg big? BoingBoing Big? Metafilter big? Understanding this was important for planning – did we need to hire staff? Should we incorporate? Get offices? I’m sure these existential questions happen all the time on the web where online empire building can often be measured in weeks. In the end, we didn't do much except try and make sure that we had enough ad and membership revenue coming in to pay our burgeoning server bill.
Major updates rolled much more frequently then. VideoSift 2.0 came in September of 2006. (by the way this is both my most cringe-worthy and favourite Sift Post - comparing VideoSift to Jennifer Gray in Dirty Dancing? Really?)
At the end of the year we got a nice accolade from PC World Magazine. This was probably the nicest, unexpected thing that has ever come to us from outside the community.
Less than a year after 2.0, in August 2007, we launched VideoSift 3.0 – the first VideoSift coded completely from scratch by @lucky760.
At this point, I did something that is personally embarrassing to me – because it makes me look and feel like a media douchebag – and my actions led me to hurt yet another community that had nurtured VideoSift.
I contacted the infamous tech blogger Michael Arrington of TechCrunch. At the time, in mid-2007, TechCrunch was a sought after venue for announcing new web ventures. There were stories of people camping outside the TechCrunch HQ to get a word with the king makers there. I sent an email to Arrington announcing that VideoSift was moving to a completely new platform with VideoSift 3.0 and highlighting that we were leaving the open source Pligg in favor of our new content management system that Lucky created. I thought the fact that we were rolling our own CMS would give us some credibility for doing something new. His email back wanted more details on the move:
Everything I wrote in the email was true but of course this became the focus of the article - with the title of "Largest Pligg Partner Defects After Announced Sale".
I don't know how much this hurt Pligg, but the upshot is that I tried to get some publicity for our new site and in doing so, took a big dump on an open source community that helped VideoSift. To this day I feel sorry about it.
* * * * *
One thing I didn't understand when first starting VideoSift, was the natural cycles of a web community. I was shocked at the time to find out that some people just … went away. I took it personally that these people would invest so much energy into our community and then piss off without even a goodbye.
The personification of this phenomenon in the early days was a Sifter who called himself @SnakePlissken. Here was a witty guy who seemed fully engaged with VideoSift. He always had something interesting or funny to say. He also used Kurt Russell as an avatar- the actor who portrays Snake in Escape from New York. When someone uses an actual human (or animal) face for their avatar – I start to think that this is who they are. It’s a completely subconscious thing and probably just wired into my brain.
One day, in those first few months, Snake disappeared- without a goodbye – never to be seen again. I think that’s when it hit me that the relationships you make in a web community aren’t the same as the ones you make in school or at work. The anonymity means that while you might feel close and connected, it’s a tenuous bond, easily broken
without ceremony. I sort of made Snake into a local urban legend - sometimes commenting that he would come back in our hour of need - maybe he will.
I began to understand that there is a natural cycle to involvement in something like VideoSift. People go like crazy for months sometimes and then find something else, or scale back- some go and come back or commit virtual seppuku. I have to remember them all - and the difference is, that I’ve always been here, and probably always will be. I suppose it’s a bit like being an elementary school teacher and seeing kids cycle through. I’m glad that a lot of you have been held back. ;-)
Next chapter:
My disastrous meeting with the Reddit team in San Francisco
Siftpocalypse Now (Oh sweet Jesus, the database is completely gone)
The best Cheese Festival ever!
Launched from its slightly murky beginnings, the new VideoSift community was thriving in the first few months of 2006. Traffic was growing and more importantly, all kinds of people were pitching their online tents at Videosift - making it their web home.
@ant who worked within Blues News was sending us regular new visitors and many of those people were hanging around to submit more content - which in turn brought more people in from Google searches, blogs and other corners of the net. In a span of only a few months, we launched Sift Talk, tried out a “Sift Off”, and had our first big “Siftquisition”. The culture of VideoSift was evolving.
I got to know @lucky760 as a Sifter about midway through that first year. He helped us out with ajax scripting and some coding to improve how Siftbot works. Before his involvement, Siftbot invocations were all actioned once a day, on a schedule – all at the same time. It seems impossible now. I was so impressed by Lucky’s code wizardry and quick turnaround on everything that he soon became part of the small VideoSift dev team. In those golden months there was a lot of other community involvement as well. @ender worked with us to make a Polish VideoSift at VideoSift.pl (now defunct). It made a big splash and even got on the national Polish news.
As we grew, we had to expand the number of servers more than once. I really didn’t know how big we were going to be. Were we Digg big? BoingBoing Big? Metafilter big? Understanding this was important for planning – did we need to hire staff? Should we incorporate? Get offices? I’m sure these existential questions happen all the time on the web where online empire building can often be measured in weeks. In the end, we didn't do much except try and make sure that we had enough ad and membership revenue coming in to pay our burgeoning server bill.
Major updates rolled much more frequently then. VideoSift 2.0 came in September of 2006. (by the way this is both my most cringe-worthy and favourite Sift Post - comparing VideoSift to Jennifer Gray in Dirty Dancing? Really?)
At the end of the year we got a nice accolade from PC World Magazine. This was probably the nicest, unexpected thing that has ever come to us from outside the community.
Less than a year after 2.0, in August 2007, we launched VideoSift 3.0 – the first VideoSift coded completely from scratch by @lucky760.
At this point, I did something that is personally embarrassing to me – because it makes me look and feel like a media douchebag – and my actions led me to hurt yet another community that had nurtured VideoSift.
I contacted the infamous tech blogger Michael Arrington of TechCrunch. At the time, in mid-2007, TechCrunch was a sought after venue for announcing new web ventures. There were stories of people camping outside the TechCrunch HQ to get a word with the king makers there. I sent an email to Arrington announcing that VideoSift was moving to a completely new platform with VideoSift 3.0 and highlighting that we were leaving the open source Pligg in favor of our new content management system that Lucky created. I thought the fact that we were rolling our own CMS would give us some credibility for doing something new. His email back wanted more details on the move:
Michael Arrington: Yeah definitely. all over this. So tell me what the limitations were with pligg that led you to do your own thing. Since pligg is open source, why not just build on it?
Me: Hi Michael thanks for the quick reply.
Pligg is a good general CMS, but there were a few considerations for moving off:
We started VideoSift shortly after Pligg was ported from the Spanish language Digg clone Meneame.net written by a talented Spanish coder, Ricardo Galli. (http://meneame.net/) Pligg has gone through a lot of revisions and changes since then - and we haven't moved with them.
About 2 months ago, there was a serious security breach at VideoSift (and other Pligg based sites) that compromised part of our DB. The breach was based on a simple hack that would have been found by analyzing the Pligg source. Although the Pligg community was quick to respond and patch the problem- This pushed us farther down the road to closed source.
And lastly, although we were well on our way to writing our new software, we have some misgivings about the pending sale of Pligg. Pligg is licensed under the Aferro GPL which is pretty strict about the re-sell of code.
The new VideoSift has been rebuilt from the ground up to work well around video aggregation. Our community loves it, and we can't wait to launch it this Friday.
Everything I wrote in the email was true but of course this became the focus of the article - with the title of "Largest Pligg Partner Defects After Announced Sale".
I don't know how much this hurt Pligg, but the upshot is that I tried to get some publicity for our new site and in doing so, took a big dump on an open source community that helped VideoSift. To this day I feel sorry about it.
* * * * *
One thing I didn't understand when first starting VideoSift, was the natural cycles of a web community. I was shocked at the time to find out that some people just … went away. I took it personally that these people would invest so much energy into our community and then piss off without even a goodbye.
The personification of this phenomenon in the early days was a Sifter who called himself @SnakePlissken. Here was a witty guy who seemed fully engaged with VideoSift. He always had something interesting or funny to say. He also used Kurt Russell as an avatar- the actor who portrays Snake in Escape from New York. When someone uses an actual human (or animal) face for their avatar – I start to think that this is who they are. It’s a completely subconscious thing and probably just wired into my brain.
One day, in those first few months, Snake disappeared- without a goodbye – never to be seen again. I think that’s when it hit me that the relationships you make in a web community aren’t the same as the ones you make in school or at work. The anonymity means that while you might feel close and connected, it’s a tenuous bond, easily broken
without ceremony. I sort of made Snake into a local urban legend - sometimes commenting that he would come back in our hour of need - maybe he will.
I began to understand that there is a natural cycle to involvement in something like VideoSift. People go like crazy for months sometimes and then find something else, or scale back- some go and come back or commit virtual seppuku. I have to remember them all - and the difference is, that I’ve always been here, and probably always will be. I suppose it’s a bit like being an elementary school teacher and seeing kids cycle through. I’m glad that a lot of you have been held back. ;-)
Next chapter:
33 Comments
dagComment hidden because you are ignoring dag. (show it anyway)
This one's a little maudlin - apologies - wine. Hey @maudlin - I remember her too.
What the hell - these are all going to the *frontpage. Siftbot - my old compadre - make haste.
siftbotPrinting this post atop the VideoSift homepage - frontpage requested by dag.
chingalera*quality morning read-I showed-up within a month of the infamous snakeplissken's bailout. Didn't he get rid of all his comments as well?
dagComment hidden because you are ignoring dag. (show it anyway)
You might be thinking of Karaidl - he did that.
*quality morning read-I showed-up within a month of the infamous snakeplissken's bailout. Didn't he get rid of all his comments as well?
K0MMIEWas looking forward to this post.
lurgeeexcellent post @dag! thank you!
chingalerakaraidl was one of the wittiest cats that ever showed-up here!
Ok, I remember the time I got Santor to send me a transcript of ever comment had ever made for some seriously heightened, ego-induced frenzy I was in, he complied, and to this day I haven't re-visited that pile of manure!!
You guys have been so civil and accommodating to the least of these, your brethren..... retard-wranglers, ombudsmen for dummies, caretakers of this finite corner of the onternet...
Um gefallenen Kameraden!
silvercordI've hobbled @SnakePlissken for abusing the Sift by abandonment.
antI miss a lot of old members like @LadyBug, @Issykitty, etc. too. Not just online, in person too (not VS members)! /me sighs at getting old. :~(
Will I be on here until I or VS dies?
ant*quality
CheshireSmile says...karaidl. i remember that hilarious motherfucker.
schmawyThe Sift is my internet home town. It's where I come from. These are great Dag. More wine!
ant+h
The Sift is my internet home town. It's where I come from. These are great Dag. More wine!
ctrlaltbleachThe Sift is the only online community I've really ever been apart of and the only place where I have ever made online friends and people I care about.
Long Lives The Siftbot!
May VideoSift shine bright in the darkness forever!
chingalera....Said he lived in Vegas with his mom-His profile pic was allegedly himself (at 16-yrs-old), sitting with a virgin Mai Tai-After reading his banter I imagined the kid (if he really was a kid) had an I.Q. of around 160
karaidl. i remember that hilarious motherfucker.
MonkeySpank says...I knew it! It's the same ant from Bluesnews! That's how found out about VideoSift in the first place!
Thanks a bunch ant!
PlayhousePalsThere's definitely something special about this place. As I've stated before, I'm usually not very social on the internet. I was very active in the Little Feat community starting when I first came online in the late 1990's, but they've pretty much moved on to Facebook and, since I refuse to have anything to do with FB, I feel out of the loop with them of late.
I joined YouTube in 2006 but didn't get personally involved until I started creating my own videos in 2011. Made some great "friends" there in the insular cat community but got discouraged/disheartened by policy and change after a year and a half.
Along came an invite to check out VS a mere 10 months ago and I was hooked ... line and sinker. So thanks @dag for creating such a compelling destination. Just wish I'd been here sooner.
antHow many ants do you know online?
I knew it! It's the same ant from Bluesnews! That's how found out about VideoSift in the first place!
Thanks a bunch ant!
antYou rock.
There's definitely something special about this place. As I've stated before, I'm usually not very social on the internet. I was very active in the Little Feat community starting when I first came online in the late 1990's, but they've pretty much moved on to Facebook and, since I refuse to have anything to do with FB, I feel out of the loop with them of late.
I joined YouTube in 2006 but didn't get personally involved until I started creating my own videos in 2011. Made some great "friends" there in the insular cat community but got discouraged/disheartened by policy and change after a year and a half.
Along came an invite to check out VS a mere 10 months ago and I was hooked ... line and sinker. So thanks @dag for creating such compelling destination. Just wish I'd have been here sooner.
YogiI'm very disappointed I haven't been mentioned.
lucky760Ah, @karaidl... He to this day is my favorite commenter of all time. I was quite heartbroken when he started nuking all his witty quips. (That is why we added a time limit on editing your own comments. Alas, it was too late to save all his gold.)
Were he still here he'd be #1 Silver Tongue like fer shur. I just hope he ended up using that big brain to do good.
Quite looking forward to the next in the series. Every time I see the word "Siftpocalypse" I get insta-anxiety. That to me is like TechCrunch to @dag methinks.
*promote
siftbotPromoting this Blog post - promote requested by lucky760.
FantomasRegarding @karaidl, I was sad to see him go as he and I shared many common interests.
Participating in roasts with him was a blast. Unfortunately my only contribution to his roast were a couple of shitty drawings.
messengerOh, the irony of my old friend @Krupo "scaling back". Huh.
In the spring of 2006, Krupo started flooding my inbox with Sifts, his messages worded as if everyone knew this Internet monument. Clearly, I resented all the linkspam and the only way to stop him was to convince him that I was a regular member and already knew everything that was happening at VS. The only way to do that was to become a member and be here all the time, commenting everywhere and sifting myself.
And I'm still here today, just keeping the wolf from the door.
darkrowanAh snake... you forgot to mention @dag that he also when through and effectively discarded every one of his posts via edit. There was much discussion afterwords about the effect on the future of the community when no one could see its past.
Also, to this day I can't look at a techcrunch article without a frown because of the whole sift/pligg incident.
dagComment hidden because you are ignoring dag. (show it anyway)
Maybe snake did go on a rampage, you're the 2nd person to mention it. I guess I glossed over that bit in my beatification of St. Snake.
Ah snake... you forgot to mention @dag that he also when through and effectively discarded every one of his posts via edit. There was much discussion afterwords about the effect on the future of the community when no one could see its past.
Also, to this day I can't look at a techcrunch article without a frown because of the whole sift/pligg incident.
dagComment hidden because you are ignoring dag. (show it anyway)
Ah the roasts ... I forgot about those!
Regarding @karaidl, I was sad to see him go as he and I shared many common interests.
Participating in roasts with him was a blast. Unfortunately my only contribution to his roast were a couple of shitty drawings.
lucky760Yeah, whatever happened to those? @dotdude was heavily into arranging those for quite a while.
Quote hidden because you are ignoring dag. (show it anyway)
Ah the roasts ... I forgot about those!
KrupoHehe, I used to suscribe to the "all sifted videos" RSS feed - you can imagine how much of a presence that caused me to have... if someone forwarded me a video I would typically do a "Simpsons did it" before that was a thing, and what I'd actually be saying is, "yeah, saw that on videosift when it only had 3 or 4 votes"....
Also worth citing (apologizes if someone did - part of my "scale back" includes skimming over very long comment threads in favour of more sleep), are the Sift Ups - met @Farhad2000 in Montreal for New Year's and others around the world - that's of course been very cool.
Actually visiting @messenger in Turkey was technically a sift-up...
Oh, the irony of my old friend @Krupo "scaling back". Huh.
In the spring of 2006, Krupo started flooding my inbox with Sifts, his messages worded as if everyone knew this Internet monument. Clearly, I resented all the linkspam and the only way to stop him was to convince him that I was a regular member and already knew everything that was happening at VS. The only way to do that was to become a member and be here all the time, commenting everywhere and sifting myself.
And I'm still here today, just keeping the wolf from the door.
dotdudeNot a soul has mentioned wanting to have a roast since that last one: http://videosift.com/parody/talk/It-s-a-motherfucking-Roast-bitches-and-gentlemen
The last roast was the second time a Roastee did not post a final response.
Yeah, whatever happened to those? @dotdude was heavily into arranging those for quite a while.
messenger...includes a minimum of 3 unrelated/unattached members who have not met up previously in under a year...
I hadn't seen you the previous summer? I find that doubtful... There were 3 Sifters in Turkey? I find that, um, wrong.
Actually visiting @messenger in Turkey was technically a sift-up...
shagen454Huh. See, I recognized Ant from Bluesnews but I never thought he was the reason I came to VS. It is all Ants fault. Thanks @ant!
Things were different back in those early Bluesnews days. For me it was Bluesnews, Shacknews, Slashdot, AVault, hanging on the Irc, blabbin on ICQ and then many hours of Quake, blowing peoples heads off listening to thrash. Gives me a headache just thinking about it.
antUh huh. Sure, blame the insect.
I wonder what is after VS (hopefully not!).
Haha, I still go to BN, /., IRC, ICQ (well very rare), Quake games, etc. Man, I miss the old days.
Huh. See, I recognized Ant from Bluesnews but I never thought he was the reason I came to VS. It is all Ants fault. Thanks @ant!
Things were different back in those early Bluesnews days. For me it was Bluesnews, Shacknews, Slashdot, AVault, hanging on the Irc, blabbin on ICQ and then many hours of Quake, blowing peoples heads off listening to thrash. Gives me a headache just thinking about it.
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