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This is true not just for analytics but pretty much all features. Imagine you are a great speaker and instructor and have an audience. Right now you GIFT it to

by EGreg 3y ago

This is true not just for analytics but pretty much all features. Imagine you are a great speaker and instructor and have an audience. Right now you GIFT it to YouTube, Twitter, etc. and they monetize it for you, give you a tiny percentage, and even constantly direct your audience to competitors and other distractions. In fact YouTube even sells an option to advertise your videos on your competitor’s videos! I say — opt out. Run your own everything! Your own community software (instead of Discord). Your own videoconferencing, livestreaming, chats, presentations, gated content, accept payments with crypto in addition to PaymentRequest. It’s hard to build an open-source alternative that is good enough (no, Mastodon and Bluesky aren’t — yet). Which is why (shameless plug warning) I spent 12 years and $1 million dollars with my team to build it. https://github.com/Qbix/Platform https://github.com/Qbix/Platform Use it — as 1 of hundreds of features, you can have your own analytics on your own database on your own community site. The other features are here: https://qbix.com/features.pdf https://qbix.com/features.pdf PS: Don’t get me wrong. Keep using YouTube to host your content, etc. But relegate it to hosting short form teasers and highlights and testimonials all of which link to your site. People can discover you on the big sites but if they are serious about your long-form content and community they should buy a membership on YOUR site and have a direct relationship — then deplatforming or coersion will be the last of your worries.

kristiandupont 3y ago
All the videos on qbix.com itself seem to be hosted on youtube? Also, the features pdf lists "nodejs" and "php" as features.. I don't mean to be snarky here, but I am simply not sure what this product is?
- EGreg 3y ago
  Watch the videos for a start
  - nottorp 3y ago
    Who has time to watch videos without a high level overview? :)
    - EGreg 3y ago
      The high level overview is at https://qbix.com/platform https://qbix.com/platform
      - nerdbert 3y ago
        I read that and don't feel like I have any more idea what this is. A CMS with some "community" features I guess? But all those overlapping screen shots make it look like there's been an explosion at the website factory and the smart thing is for me to run in the other direction. 1/3 of the Youtube videos are just "This video is unavailable". I couldn't look at it that much longer because the colorful stars falling out of my mouse cursor was so distracting I had to close the tab.
- beardog 3y ago
  In addition to PHP, it is a "Distributed Operating System for The Web" https://qbix.com/ecosystem#Distributed-Operating-System https://qbix.com/ecosystem#Distributed-Operating-System
TotempaaltJ 3y ago
Holy 2008 what a website! I won't comment on any specific design choices here, but accessibility-wise: the text on the team page seems fuzzy? Looks like it's a text-shadow.
- EGreg 3y ago
  What is 2008 about this website? I don't know any websites from 2008 that look like that. What do current websites have which websites from 2008 don't? When I visit YouTube, Facebook or Twitter, they seem extremely "busy", overrun with ads, and rather ugly, but we are used to them. I am not sure it's so bad to have a clean layout. But I am open to constructive criticism.
  - arcanemachiner 3y ago
    I get where they're coming from. It kinda reminds me of an old-school iOS app (pre-iOS 7, before everything went all flat design). The skeumorphism, the arrows in the menu, the big black borders on the menu. The layout, styling and font kind of reminds me of the jQuery era (but of course, I was primed to look for this stuff by the GP comment). None of what I'm saying is criticism BTW. Just observation.
    - EGreg 3y ago
      Does it make it bad or offputting?
      - electroly 3y ago
        I don't know about the 2008 stuff but I found the site to be pretty broken, as in things clearly not working and the code blowing up. The design is very busy on desktop; I suspect your "clean design" is what you see on mobile. The desktop site is packed to the gills and every page has multiple things animating and bouncing at me. Let me make it clear--this site is busier than most, not cleaner. On desktop, it's pretty easy to open one of the menus on the top and then have it fail to close. Since the site disables the scrollbars while a menu is open, it breaks the site until you figure out the magic spot to move the mouse to make the menu close again. The magic spot doesn't seem to be in the same place every time. Seems buggy. I spent most of my time on this site with one of the menus open, unable to scroll down and see beyond the first page. The worst part? The links in the menus don't work. A peek in the source code suggests they are supposed to be links, but clicking them doesn't do anything because they're just <div>s (not real <a> links) and the click event handler simply calls preventDefault (QTools.js line 107). That finicky navbar nearly ruins the entire site. I'm almost entirely unable to navigate around. This site is, unfortunately, pretty broken on desktop Chrome. Test your site on desktop in addition to mobile. I got the site to hit an explicit debugger breakpoint in Q.js line 10293 just by clicking around the top menu buttons. The author of that code didn't bother writing an exception handler, they just had it trigger the debugger. I do find it offputting; the site definitely has the feel of "a programmer hacked this together without any input from a designer." The massive drop shadow from the embedded videos actually covers up some of the text on desktop. The font is VERY thin--make sure to check your site on Windows and not just macOS. More generally: hire a designer. Programmer designs stick out in a bad way, and users seeing a broken marketing site will assume the product is broken, too. I certainly do.
moneywoes 3y ago
How do you plan to monetize?
jahewson 3y ago
> they monetize it for you, give you a tiny percentage It’s actually about 55% for YouTube. Creators are in demand and it’s competitive to keep them.
nerdbert 3y ago
> Which is why (shameless plug warning) I spent 12 years and $1 million dollars with my team to build it. How much of that one million dollars dollars went to creating the confetti effect following the mouse cursor around on https://qbix.com/ https://qbix.com/ ?

by EGreg 3y ago

kristiandupont 3y ago

All the videos on qbix.com itself seem to be hosted on youtube? Also, the features pdf lists "nodejs" and "php" as features.. I don't mean to be snarky here, but I am simply not sure what this product is?

EGreg 3y ago
Watch the videos for a start
- nottorp 3y ago
  Who has time to watch videos without a high level overview? :)
  - EGreg 3y ago
    The high level overview is at https://qbix.com/platform https://qbix.com/platform
    - nerdbert 3y ago
      I read that and don't feel like I have any more idea what this is. A CMS with some "community" features I guess? But all those overlapping screen shots make it look like there's been an explosion at the website factory and the smart thing is for me to run in the other direction. 1/3 of the Youtube videos are just "This video is unavailable". I couldn't look at it that much longer because the colorful stars falling out of my mouse cursor was so distracting I had to close the tab.
beardog 3y ago
In addition to PHP, it is a "Distributed Operating System for The Web" https://qbix.com/ecosystem#Distributed-Operating-System https://qbix.com/ecosystem#Distributed-Operating-System

TotempaaltJ 3y ago

Holy 2008 what a website! I won't comment on any specific design choices here, but accessibility-wise: the text on the team page seems fuzzy? Looks like it's a text-shadow.

EGreg 3y ago
What is 2008 about this website? I don't know any websites from 2008 that look like that. What do current websites have which websites from 2008 don't? When I visit YouTube, Facebook or Twitter, they seem extremely "busy", overrun with ads, and rather ugly, but we are used to them. I am not sure it's so bad to have a clean layout. But I am open to constructive criticism.
- arcanemachiner 3y ago
  I get where they're coming from. It kinda reminds me of an old-school iOS app (pre-iOS 7, before everything went all flat design). The skeumorphism, the arrows in the menu, the big black borders on the menu. The layout, styling and font kind of reminds me of the jQuery era (but of course, I was primed to look for this stuff by the GP comment). None of what I'm saying is criticism BTW. Just observation.
  - EGreg 3y ago
    Does it make it bad or offputting?
    - electroly 3y ago
      I don't know about the 2008 stuff but I found the site to be pretty broken, as in things clearly not working and the code blowing up. The design is very busy on desktop; I suspect your "clean design" is what you see on mobile. The desktop site is packed to the gills and every page has multiple things animating and bouncing at me. Let me make it clear--this site is busier than most, not cleaner. On desktop, it's pretty easy to open one of the menus on the top and then have it fail to close. Since the site disables the scrollbars while a menu is open, it breaks the site until you figure out the magic spot to move the mouse to make the menu close again. The magic spot doesn't seem to be in the same place every time. Seems buggy. I spent most of my time on this site with one of the menus open, unable to scroll down and see beyond the first page. The worst part? The links in the menus don't work. A peek in the source code suggests they are supposed to be links, but clicking them doesn't do anything because they're just <div>s (not real <a> links) and the click event handler simply calls preventDefault (QTools.js line 107). That finicky navbar nearly ruins the entire site. I'm almost entirely unable to navigate around. This site is, unfortunately, pretty broken on desktop Chrome. Test your site on desktop in addition to mobile. I got the site to hit an explicit debugger breakpoint in Q.js line 10293 just by clicking around the top menu buttons. The author of that code didn't bother writing an exception handler, they just had it trigger the debugger. I do find it offputting; the site definitely has the feel of "a programmer hacked this together without any input from a designer." The massive drop shadow from the embedded videos actually covers up some of the text on desktop. The font is VERY thin--make sure to check your site on Windows and not just macOS. More generally: hire a designer. Programmer designs stick out in a bad way, and users seeing a broken marketing site will assume the product is broken, too. I certainly do.

moneywoes 3y ago

How do you plan to monetize?

jahewson 3y ago

> they monetize it for you, give you a tiny percentage It’s actually about 55% for YouTube. Creators are in demand and it’s competitive to keep them.

nerdbert 3y ago

> Which is why (shameless plug warning) I spent 12 years and $1 million dollars with my team to build it. How much of that one million dollars dollars went to creating the confetti effect following the mouse cursor around on https://qbix.com/ https://qbix.com/ ?