OK. So sometimes we shouldn't make things too easy. But other times, we make things too goddamned hard when the process should be simple.
I was telling you about the 20-year old with the Nokia N93i I lent her. She loved making videos and was keen on posting them onto YouTube.
Making the videos was easy. Uploading them was not.
First, it was a challenge to get them onto our Mac - cable, browsing folders, dragging things over, managing it all.
Ugh.
Next, she was having the darnedest time getting them onto YouTube. There were constant failures. The FAQ told her mpeg4 wasn't supported (it is).
Nokia recently cut a deal with YouTube, but it's only for browsing, as far as I can tell. We couldn't figure out how to upload via the Nokia.YouTube mobile pages.
She tried uploading from her phone. We searched a bit and saw ShoZu could do it. Well, not really, since it wouldn't upload anything over 4MB, which is a really really short video on the N93i. We tried making the video smaller, but no luck.
Not to be dissuaded, she tried and tried until the videos started to properly upload onto YouTube.
To me, the story illustrates a few key things.
1) Unless the person is determined to do something, it can be really easy to lose a potential user if any part of the process is not smooth.
2) With all these moving parts, someone can make a killing by making this work smoothly and intelligently. YouTube tried, but 60MB files can't be uploaded via email. Also, the apparently have poor error feedback during their upload process. ShoZu tried, but failed for me (though I bet 4MB is sufficient for most folk).
Has Nokia tried. I\m not sure. I need to walk over to the video guys and see what we can do to make this easier.
It's the least I could do.
What do you think?
