Tech consultant for Olympia, Lacey, And Tumwater

So I love both Ustream & StickAm. Let me start out this rant by saying that anyone who complains about what they are giving us all for absolutely free is nothing more than a total douchebag. It’s free, so stop your bitching. However, there is a solution to all of our problems. Give us some pay level of service. Now I mostly use Ustream, so this rant will focus mostly on that service.

Now just like the friendly neighborhood crack dealer, what we get for free is a really great introduction to what they have to offer. Jump into their service with both feet and you will be totally hooked. You will however end up wanting more than what they started out giving you for free. So with this little rant I hope that one of my favorite crack dealers (I will call him Ustream) will offer a few pay services. I am hooked and now I want more crack!

First off, am I the only one who has never been able to play back a video I recorded from Ustream? Never once has it worked for me. As it is a free service I should not bitch. I can however wish they would offer me a pay version that might be put on a higher end (or a less strained) server that would play back more dependably.

Now if you use Ustream to record shows you will also find in the control panel an option to convert your video to a format your followers might be able to download more eaily. Can’t stream the archived video as I mentioned above? No problem! Just convert it to a WMV or an MPEG and let viewers download the thing and watch it offline. Ok, this is another problem. I have never been able to get this so called converter to work! I would also love to have the option to let my followers just download any file type of anything I do at anytime in any way they want. Otherwise what’s the point? Again, I am not complaining about their great free service. I am just saying I would love to have a paid version that offers these few extra things. A higher level of service for a little bit of monthly cash.

Now how much to charge for something like this? Now of course they could charge a few hundred a month to offer the level of service I am talking about in this post. Then they might get 2 or 3 people that would pay. Or they could charge $5 to $10 a month and I am pretty sure they would have a flood of people sign up. When word spreads that it is everything they promise even more people would sign up. This would at least quadruple their revenue in just a few days. If they prove me wrong I will go on my Ustream account wearing a pink tutu lip syncing to Disney Showtunes. What do I have to worry about? It’s not like anyone would be able to view the footage in archives anyways, right?

Wanna know how to get the most out of what they do offer for free? Watch the video below…

So Digg continues to go down the tubes. They keep banning top users for no apparent reason. They say it is because they were using bot programs to automate blind voting of friends’ submissions. However, many have made it very clear that this was not the case. These are people that I trust way more than the Digg staff.  It seems that this is now starting to really affect their traffic as well. Mixx seems to be gaining most of these rejected Digg users and a few web traffic ranking sites are starting to show Mixx catching up very quickly. How much will they have to lose before they see that this is not the way to go?

Now this doesn’t affect me in any way because I gave up on Digg a long time ago. I think it has been around a year at this point. In fact, when they put RockMyMonkey.com on the auto-bury it inspired me to start my own site, HeavyAsHell.com. The Digg community wouldn’t know what rock was if Lemmy (from Motorhead) shoved it up their backside with the end of his boot! If it isn’t some weak 3 piece suit crap like Radiohead, Coldplay, or Weezer they get afraid and run away like the pink dress wearing little girls they are. So I created a site made for people that like to rock a little harder. Sure we have those wussy 3 piece suit rock bands, but it’s more about meat and potatoes rock, metal and punk. To me this was the start of the fall of Digg. So none of the garbage they are trying now is much of a shock to me.

Why are they doing these things that are so obviously suicide for their previously successful business? I mean they pretty much invented the style of site that so many others are now taking to the next level. So when they started to auto-bury sites like RockMyMonkey and other great bloggers it was driven by pure ego. They were the undisputed kings and no one could touch them. However, they played bully too long and the masses started to resent them. Instead of the proverbial ‘David’ kicking the butt of ‘Goliath’, they became the ‘Goliath’ that everyone wanted to bring down. Now that everyone wants to bring them down, they are making desperate last gasp efforts to reinvent themselves.

So why save themselves? Well, there is the several times they came close to being bought for millions by much bigger companies. After Google recently rejected them they started acting like they were drowning more than anything. Their moves became more desperate and the suicide began. Can they save themselves? Maybe.

How can they save themselves? Well, take a note from Mixx. Mixx kisses their users’ collective asses. Instead of looking down their noses at their users like Digg has done for so long, they seem to come off like humble servants. This has created a rather passionate fanbase. The other thing Mixx has done to win people over is an insanely open attitude towards the users. Try and email Kevin Rose and email Chris from Mixx at the same time. Don’t bother starting a time clock because it won’t be even close. Be more open. Be more honest. Don’t just accuse all the banned users of using a bot. Be clear about what each one did. If Digg was more honest, more open, more clear, and more humble they would be able to keep the king’s crown. If not, Mixx will destroy them and micro-Social sites like HeavyAsHell will grow from eating off of their corpse as well. Let’s not dance on their grave yet, though. Let’s wait until they get a little closer to their death!