Rule4080
04-06-09, 03:16 AM
Hi,
You all may know me, I actually created the SMH smilie which in retrospect is kinda crazy. I wish I could metrics on how many times that image has been used, but I digress.
I just wanted to hit ya'll with some feedback b/c at the end of the day, SOHH still in my mind is the best place for hip hop on the internet, yet and still, I don't think you guys have fully capitalized and become the "Huffington Post" of hip-hop online.
First the Dougie. I have to ask ... why? What problem were you trying to solve with the Dougie? Was it to just throw a social network on the side b/c that's whats hot on the internets? In the end, your trying to get people from the forum who cherish their anonymity to bring themselves out into a near real world experience, and in the end, none of them are gonna go for that. Also, it seems to want to link real big name artists to the Dougie, when in reality it looks like some scraped youtubes that really prove nothing. I really hope that the development of TheDougie didn't take long, b/c I don't think that is the format in which to get deeper user engagement from hip hop fans online.
If you take a step back and look at the most successful internet properties currently, they don't try to do much, they try to really dominate in one area. Google's success is built off having the best search. Facebook currently beats all social networks by connecting you with your real friends. Twitter keeps those friends aware of what you are doing.
When I ask what is SOHH trying to do ... I'm not quite sure. You have a robust forum which is disjointed from other parts of the site. You have a frontpage which links to sub-blogs, and videos, and news that isn't breaking. Like, whats the difference between news and columns? What content is scraped and original construction? The user experience is just really disjointed and its really hard to put it all together outside of the green theme. It's like you have a piece of every internet trend w/o really fully delivering on each piece.
Honestly, I think SOHH should try to solve the problem of "delivering the best, timely, accurate hip-hop news on the internet". Even today, hip-hop content is really segmented. You have aggregate sites like allhiphop/sohh/hiphopdx, but the content is really lacking. You have quick twitch mp3/blog sites like onsmash/nahright, but blogs are inherently limited. You have the artist sites like ThisIs50/okayplayer, but those eventually fall prey to being fan based and swing as quick as the wind.
Taking a look at the metrics (I know ... take these with 1,000 grains of salt, but it at least starts the discussion):
http://siteanalytics.compete.com/thisis50.com+sohh.com+nahright.com/?metric=uv
You can see the explosive growth of artist influenced sites, and the recent uptake of blog sites ... but even still there isn't a central destination for all this content. A hip-hop fan still has to go to each type of site to get the best content. If you could provide a one stop shop for all things hip-hop ... I really think SOHH could become the HuffPo of Hip-Hop and really deliver not only value to hip hop fans, but also deliver value to a now increasingly internet caring base of hip-hop artists. What if you could deliver to hip-hop artists the undisputed #1 hip-hop site on the internet ... don't you think their marketing budgets would go towards some nice ad space on SOHH as well as deliver web-sclusives?
But, if SOHH is going to do this, it'll take a major clean up of the frontpage to start from scratch. Essentially, you need to really care about the user experience and what a user wants rather than emblazon it with nasty graphics and internet trends from 2002. (The sensationalistic journalism need to really bounce also ...). Also, if you can create and automated way to scrape the best content from the forums and bring this to the frontpage, you'd hit a goldmine. Outside of the general fukkery of the forum, there are some really intelligent, localized, hip hop fans on the boards that are an invaluable resource not only to other fans, but sales and marketers. Like the khrys_x young money thread even before Weezy blew up ... I mean that's just natural local recognition of something that was gonna blow that was way before its time.
Ok, now I'm getting tired of typing ... but really, in the current economic times, you should just get back to basics, hit the home run in one area, care about your users and watch the success roll in.
Exec Summary:
- Define & solve a problem "Deliver the best, timely, accurate hip-hop news on the internet"
- Develop a "rest of '09" roadmap. (Can the Dougie / Re-vamp the frontpage / respect the user experience / aggregate hip-hop news / scrape-bring-forward best forum content)
- ReVisit current corporate structure based on ROI. (Do you guys have ad managers and/or seo's? Do you guys actually pay those crappy bloggers? Recognize and realize where the paychecks are going and what the actual impact is on the bottom line).
I actually have more feedback ... but if this made any sense to ya'll, holler at me and I can give you more targeted feedback on optimizing SOHH. The online rap game still hasn't been dominated ... and ya'll can easily take the crown ...
You all may know me, I actually created the SMH smilie which in retrospect is kinda crazy. I wish I could metrics on how many times that image has been used, but I digress.
I just wanted to hit ya'll with some feedback b/c at the end of the day, SOHH still in my mind is the best place for hip hop on the internet, yet and still, I don't think you guys have fully capitalized and become the "Huffington Post" of hip-hop online.
First the Dougie. I have to ask ... why? What problem were you trying to solve with the Dougie? Was it to just throw a social network on the side b/c that's whats hot on the internets? In the end, your trying to get people from the forum who cherish their anonymity to bring themselves out into a near real world experience, and in the end, none of them are gonna go for that. Also, it seems to want to link real big name artists to the Dougie, when in reality it looks like some scraped youtubes that really prove nothing. I really hope that the development of TheDougie didn't take long, b/c I don't think that is the format in which to get deeper user engagement from hip hop fans online.
If you take a step back and look at the most successful internet properties currently, they don't try to do much, they try to really dominate in one area. Google's success is built off having the best search. Facebook currently beats all social networks by connecting you with your real friends. Twitter keeps those friends aware of what you are doing.
When I ask what is SOHH trying to do ... I'm not quite sure. You have a robust forum which is disjointed from other parts of the site. You have a frontpage which links to sub-blogs, and videos, and news that isn't breaking. Like, whats the difference between news and columns? What content is scraped and original construction? The user experience is just really disjointed and its really hard to put it all together outside of the green theme. It's like you have a piece of every internet trend w/o really fully delivering on each piece.
Honestly, I think SOHH should try to solve the problem of "delivering the best, timely, accurate hip-hop news on the internet". Even today, hip-hop content is really segmented. You have aggregate sites like allhiphop/sohh/hiphopdx, but the content is really lacking. You have quick twitch mp3/blog sites like onsmash/nahright, but blogs are inherently limited. You have the artist sites like ThisIs50/okayplayer, but those eventually fall prey to being fan based and swing as quick as the wind.
Taking a look at the metrics (I know ... take these with 1,000 grains of salt, but it at least starts the discussion):
http://siteanalytics.compete.com/thisis50.com+sohh.com+nahright.com/?metric=uv
You can see the explosive growth of artist influenced sites, and the recent uptake of blog sites ... but even still there isn't a central destination for all this content. A hip-hop fan still has to go to each type of site to get the best content. If you could provide a one stop shop for all things hip-hop ... I really think SOHH could become the HuffPo of Hip-Hop and really deliver not only value to hip hop fans, but also deliver value to a now increasingly internet caring base of hip-hop artists. What if you could deliver to hip-hop artists the undisputed #1 hip-hop site on the internet ... don't you think their marketing budgets would go towards some nice ad space on SOHH as well as deliver web-sclusives?
But, if SOHH is going to do this, it'll take a major clean up of the frontpage to start from scratch. Essentially, you need to really care about the user experience and what a user wants rather than emblazon it with nasty graphics and internet trends from 2002. (The sensationalistic journalism need to really bounce also ...). Also, if you can create and automated way to scrape the best content from the forums and bring this to the frontpage, you'd hit a goldmine. Outside of the general fukkery of the forum, there are some really intelligent, localized, hip hop fans on the boards that are an invaluable resource not only to other fans, but sales and marketers. Like the khrys_x young money thread even before Weezy blew up ... I mean that's just natural local recognition of something that was gonna blow that was way before its time.
Ok, now I'm getting tired of typing ... but really, in the current economic times, you should just get back to basics, hit the home run in one area, care about your users and watch the success roll in.
Exec Summary:
- Define & solve a problem "Deliver the best, timely, accurate hip-hop news on the internet"
- Develop a "rest of '09" roadmap. (Can the Dougie / Re-vamp the frontpage / respect the user experience / aggregate hip-hop news / scrape-bring-forward best forum content)
- ReVisit current corporate structure based on ROI. (Do you guys have ad managers and/or seo's? Do you guys actually pay those crappy bloggers? Recognize and realize where the paychecks are going and what the actual impact is on the bottom line).
I actually have more feedback ... but if this made any sense to ya'll, holler at me and I can give you more targeted feedback on optimizing SOHH. The online rap game still hasn't been dominated ... and ya'll can easily take the crown ...