Thanks for posting Sean - you've always been our fave Norse god.
Hi hunters, Guy here - one of the co-founders and product designer behind Maven. We're happy to release Maven into open beta today and with that begin the first bold steps toward a corner of the internet we hope will grow into something special.
Maven is a video platform powered by micropayments. Myself and my co-founder Heidi have been video creators for about ten years now and what has become abundantly clear is that the economics behind how video content makers are both compensated and attributed on the internet desperately needs a re-think.
Maven encompasses three goals:
1. Redesign the video format itself to have the creator and community engagement front and centre.
- All the videos on Maven are interactive providing community members with extra features such as in video polls, image galleries and more.
2. Provide a platform which eschews an ad-based model in order to establish direct micropayments as a viable alternative
- we're beginning with simple tipping/donations but intend to forge ahead with a token wallet system, subscriptions in a future release
3. Champion video creators and provide them with tools to remain independent.
- At its heart Maven is an example of what happens when content makers learn to code. We think it's about time there was a video platform made for and made by creators.
We'd absolutely love any feedback, questions and comments. Thanks for your support and happy hunting!
Some in-depth info here: https://medium.com/letters-code/...
@guygunaratne i believe this is a winning approach for the industry! i watched a few of the videos on Maven and really enjoyed the contextual info. Saves me tons of time in researching and makes the content more immersive. I wonder what the experience of watching Game Of Thrones with context info on characters will be like.
@hunterbecton hey Hunter - yes indeed. Maven creators get access to our interactive video tool Storygami - which, yes, is where you can add your interactive cards into your videos. Those cards by the way are a bit of a secret sauce - they increase engagement by up to 90% and retention by up to 200%. The tech was road tested by the likes of Virgin Media, Al Jazeera News and some other content companies over the last two years - now we're offering the technology to independent content makers with the hope to help them build communities.
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Have been hearing about Maven for a bit! Exciting soluting, thanks for sharing Sean and introducing my friends to this video solution as well =D
I like the direction of micro-payments and as a content creator I want to provide some raw feedback:
Bottleneck #1: Login trust
In order for a content creator (especially larger ones) to hand the keys over to a new platform, there has to be more information.
Bottleneck #2: Separate site for templates
There appears to be a re-direct to Storygami from Maven. This raises concerns referring back to bottleneck #1 and the security of the account.
Bottleneck #3: Ads on the videos
I saw a percentage of the videos on Maven/Storygami are embedded from YouTube and have ads running on them via Maven.
Is Maven/Storygami planning to host video itself and remove the YouTube ads you mentioned were not the most effective monetization route?
P.S. I hope that micro-payments make a ripple for content creators like myself over the next few years, so I wanted to give you straightforward feedback to help @guygunaratne
@stvmcg what a golden comment. Thanks Steve, really appreciate the in-depth feedback. We're going to fix 1 - we have a sweet little splash page we can make more apparent. Number 2 is an interesting one - yes Maven has access to our Storygami interactive creator tool which while integrated, I can see how it may seem a little too detached - noted. On 3 - yes, we're beginning with Youtube since it'll be easier for creators to batch import their channel to Maven and still keep their YouTube presence etc. At some point though we'll look at offering self-hosting with Maven. Our beta group of creators are really important to us though so we're going to consult with them around this sort of thing, keep them in the loop regarding this and hopefully provide something they can grow with.
RE: micro-payments - I hope so too. And am confident it will make the right kind of ripple for you - if you haven't already do check out EP1 of the original series I produced on micropayments: https://www.maven.video/c/maven/...
Again, truly thankful for the feedback. Give me a shout if you'd like to join the beta group, it's this kind of feedback that'll make the difference for us.
Here's also an example of what our interactive videos on Maven look like. Click the top left icon to see all of the overlays in this video. https://www.maven.video/c/maven/...
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