@pavelpekanov I like the idea of a digital time capsule a lot!
PRICING // Though I'm not sure if people are willing to pay these big amounts. I think you should try different pricings with different services, not just in different time spans. For example different prices for 5min or 40min of time. If you get the price down to a reasonable amount, say 5min / year will cost 10$, I think the probability that people are going to join, is much higher. Additionally I recommend to have a look at subscription based models, so e.g. I pay 20$ / year and can record up to 40min, but I can split these 40mins in more than one video.
PRIVATE VS. PUBLIC // Have you also thought about a public time capsule? Many stories are private and should be kept private, but I would maybe also like to share my thoughts and advise to the whole community.
GET IT STARTED // As this product is really a long term project, I think it won't be easy to reach a critical mass, which makes it a profitable and sustainable product. People can not interact with your website frequently, they have almost no content to interact with. Maybe you have some idea, how you can transform your product in some community/forum website, which I like to visit frequently, because people are sharing regularly their thoughts and if I want to get my daily dose of inspiration of someone who wants to share his personal story, I get one random story selected. I'd love to get something like this.
Looking forward to the progress you're going to make with this product!
@dbleilevens thanks for the feedback.
We'll probably work with our pricing model, taking messages duration into account, just like you suggested. Though, we don't want to become something like Meerkat/Periscope/Youtube. The concept is a bit different. Won't hurt to try though.
We'll be introducing public messages soon. Our users will be able to choose between sealing the message privately, or sealing the message to be avail publically on a special page (like the live feed, similar to services like Youtube/Pinterest/Twitch).
We'll be implementing the following to attract early users:
- public messages
- photo messages and text messages (stories, similar to Medium)
It's a long-shot project. However, there are resources to keep it running. We'll deliver the great product and I believe people will follow.
Btw, a lot of stuff is going to be/stay free. Like sealing for shorter periods, sealing coupon on a certain date.
Thanks for your feedback!
@pavelpekanov Sounds good to me! I'm very curious about how people are going to use it and if they "accept it"!
Is there some possibility to stay up-to-date? Didn't see a newsletter feature or something similar. I guess I'm just following your Twitter Channel and hope to get the updates there! :)
Cool concept @pavelpekanov
What is the pricing model after the coupon expires? Looks like (from screenshot) that you are going to charge $99 for 1 year? How much would it be for 50 years?
When a video is saved, where does it go and how does the recipient see it? I recorded a test, clicked the upload and now I have no idea where it is? How would I send that to a friend?
I think the video should be explaining the product rather than voice-overs from people talking about life - seemed a bit cheesy for my taste 😁
Would also note that make sure you touch on diversity in the video with the people used (big topic out there at the moment and no doubt, someone will mention it)
@bentossell Hey, thanks!
>What is the pricing model after the coupon expires? Looks like (from screenshot) that you are going to charge $99 for 1 year? How much would it be for 50 years?
Once the video is sealed, no hidden charges will apply. Say, you sealed with coupon and it expired in an hour--there'll be no charge and your video will stay sealed until the specified time. Same goes for paid messages--once you pay for it, it's done.
Once the coupon expires it will no longer be available for new users, from that moment a flexible pricing model takes effect. Our pricing model is based on the seal duration and secret keyphrase length (5+ characters are cheaper, 2-3 chars are really expensive).
However, the idea is that we'll be releasing coupons for every other significant date there is. Say, there will be a coupon for Mother's Day, St.Valentine's, etc.
And you could click on "50 years" and see how much it would cost you (on normal terms).
>When a video is saved, where does it go and how does the recipient see it? I recorded a test, clicked the upload and now I have no idea where it is? How would I send that to a friend?
The transcoded video is saved to a private cloud. The final video is saved to our server and encrypted using your secret keyphrase and our own secret key.
>I think the video should be explaining the product rather than voice-overs from people talking about life - seemed a bit cheesy for my taste 😁
Please, check out the FAQ section. I think making a video like that sets the right mood for the people. We'll ba having public videos soon, and we don't really want to have any moderation, that's why we're trying to set the right mood, the right feel for the whole project with the video, design and other promo materials.
@pavelpekanov
Ok so could you tell me how much a 10 second video with a 5+ password for 50 years would cost? Assuming I make it after the coupon expires and I'm a 'normal user'.
What happens if someone uses the same passkey as me?
Didn't really answer my question of when its saved how do I then send it to someone? Shouldn't there be an email/text/FB message/etc
Just my opinion but I felt like an explainer video would do better at showing off the product rather than the format it is currently (again, just my opinion!)
Also, do note the diversity issue.
@bentossell,
>Ok so could you tell me how much a 10 second video with a 5+ password for 50 years would cost? Assuming I make it after the coupon expires and I'm a 'normal user'.
Hm. Now that you mentioned the message duration itself, it became interesting. The idea was to let people seal their life stories (or something really significant, like, say, ideas). That's why we limited the duration to 40 minutes, and we don't calculate the price based on video duration.
I'd say you could leave a great message, a story, say 10 minutes you talking about how you do things today that your future older self would laugh at, hopefully ;-) That'd cost you $100,000/~235 BTC for 50 years (basically, honestly, that's for a lifespan for the most of us in our 30s). The same price would apply for 10s. So, now that's expensive per second. However, the idea is different, we don't really expect people to seal short messages.
Thanks for the question, though.
>Didn't really answer my question of when its saved how do I then send it to someone? Shouldn't there be an email/text/FB message/etc
Oh, right, missed that one. You should memorize your secret keyphrase, or write it elsewhere, or email/sms/imessage it manually to whoever you want to.
Once the recipient has your keyphrase, he/she simply clicks on Watch link on the website and types in the keyphrase to be taken to message page itself.
>Just my opinion but I felt like an explainer video would do better at showing off the product rather than the format it is currently (again, just my opinion!)
We might do that, actually. Populating more FAQ entries (based on your above questions, too ;-), making an explainer video.
>Also, do note the diversity issue.
Could you elaborate a bit on that one, please?
@pavelpekanov Ok so I think the pricing is really expensive then... Not sure many (if any) would be willing to pay $100k for a 40 minute video to be seen in 50 years time.
So a passkey set by ANY user can only be used once, right? Otherwise there is the issue of someone using the same passkey obviously.
Great :)
Well the video only shows white people. Diversity is a very sensitive subject so worth taking a note of that. (I know it's not intentional)
If you dont want to store the info (which is great) then maybe have a pre-populated 140 character max message that ppl can copy and paste on their preferred platform to send to someone.
@bentossell,
>Ok so I think the pricing is really expensive then... Not sure many (if any) would be willing to pay $100k for a 40 minute video to be seen in 50 years time.
Well, most of us won't even need to seal anything for that long. However, it really depends on the message and the person. Some people have a lot to say and 40 minutes of them sharing their experiene worth a lot more than $100k in monetary or any other value.
>So a passkey set by ANY user can only be used once, right? Otherwise there is the issue of someone using the same passkey obviously.
Yep, and we also check if the keyphrase has been used by someone else before.
>Well the video only shows white people. Diversity is a very sensitive subject so worth taking a note of that. (I know it's not intentional)
Ah. Yes. That's not intentional entirely. I'm familar with this issue, had it on some other project. The thing is we shot locally, and we don't have much diversity here where we shot the whole thing. Very much noted and appreciated!
>If you dont want to store the info (which is great) then maybe have a pre-populated 140 character max message that ppl can copy and paste on their preferred platform to send to someone.
Oh come on, you just can't be that awesome. Noted and appreciated! That's a very elegant solution. Could even let people share on their timeline/feed (if they want to break some privacy on their end).
Nice. I see the pricing is an issue here and that's why I'll talk about "my idea" a couple of years back (never even tried). I thought about supplying the service for free but storing all the data on my servers and charging users for stopping future videos they created. Suddenly you get a notice that the video you created 6 months ago to a close friend is about to be sent... you realize you were drunk and told her "not to marry that bozo". You guessed it, she's married to him now. You actually pay to cancel the video from getting to her. The closer it is to the send time the more it'll cost.
@moravtchik hey, thanks for sharing your idea. That's a smart way to get customers to pay, though don't you think it's cruel and possibly unusual punishment? ;-) We'll probably revise our pricing model in a few ways to make it more flexible for less demanding users.
@pavelpekanov@moravtchik Exactly - Cruel and unusual punishment! Remember I was all talk and didn't actually do anything about it, so I lost my right to advise. You have a great product, I'm sure you'll get the pricing model just right. Rooting for you!
Amazing Creatures Mobile (alpha ver.)
Amazing Creatures Mobile (alpha ver.)
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