My name’s Nadine, and I manage product at Viki. A few weeks ago, we announced our upcoming redesign, and I wanted to first give you a preview of what to expect with the launch later this week.
Many of the changes are based on results of a site-wide user survey we ran back in November with responses from thousands of users from around the world, requests from content partners, and most importantly, detailed conversations with community members over the last year. Many of you have been and are testing the beta version of the site as we speak, so thank you again for all your great feedback!
A fresh look
- The first thing you’ll notice is a new look and feel -- new logo, color scheme and layout. The site should be much easier to navigate, which will help everyone find exactly what they’re looking for, faster. This is only the first of many steps toward making the Viki experience smoother for everyone, including content owners and brand partners, who have also provided a lot of feedback along the way.
Video performance
- We want the video-viewing experience to be fantastic. The new video page will be “lighter” and load faster, which will allow videos to start more quickly.
- You’ll soon have a “report problems” button on all videos, which will automatically send us a report with important information that will help us resolve any issues quickly. This is just one of several mechanisms we’re testing to detect performance variances.
New community features
- The new community page will be a place for fans to learn about Viki through links to the Viki Help Center, blog posts and more; and it’s where Channel Managers and other contributors can post and see open subbing and segmenting projects. You can see the community page here:
- Need someone to subtitle a Korean show into Arabic, or a Turkish show into English? The new projects board will allow Channel Managers to “advertise” open segmenting, subtitling or moderating projects on their channels; and anyone can browse and find projects they’d like to work on.
- We want to do a far better job in surfacing and recognizing the efforts of the community. You’ll see more attribution of individuals and channel teams integrated into the product, including on the featured titles that appear on the home page. This is just the beginning -- there’s much more to come.
- You’ve been asking for the ability to co-manage channels for awhile, and I’m happy to let you know that we’re rolling this feature out, too. Now two people can manage one channel at the same time.
- In order to maintain the quality of completed, subtitled episodes, Channel Managers will now have the power to lock subtitles and prevent further edits on select languages. This feature will is scheduled to be released shortly after everything else that is listed here.
- Currently all segmenters are appointed by the channel staff, but going forward, we’ll award Power Segmenter status to dedicated, seasoned and high quality segmenters who will be able to segment any video without having to be first appointed. The program will be similar to the Super Segmenter program that was retired in December 2010. More details on this coming soon.
These are just a few of the many updates to come. Unlike the December 2010 release, a lot of the tools and functionality of Viki will remain untouched. We also now have a person who’s dedicated to testing the site, many more Viki staff members checking the site before launch, and many of you, who have been giving us feedback regularly.
Despite this, please keep in mind that there’s no way to have a 100% bug-free launch, especially for a release this big. However, we’ve been working very hard to minimize them as much as possible. We hope you like the changes, but of course we welcome all and any feedback.
In the coming weeks and months, we’ll have even more updates and features coming your way. We hope you stay tuned. :)
