Tuesday, January 14, 2014

How to remove the filter on the MyVidster App

Hey, Vidsters! Want to access all of your curated content on our mobile app regardless of whether it’s family friendly or not? No worries. Here’s how:

1. Remove the filter by toggling it from your desktop first. You can do that by clicking here.
2. Restart the app on your mobile device and log back in. 
3. You should leave us a review!

We love hearing your feedback and not only do we read them, we work really hard to make improvements on a daily basis. IOS users can leave us a review here and Android users can leave us a review here.

For feedback on the app or any questions, please feel free to contact us through twitter here.


Saturday, November 2, 2013

Just released myVidster iPhone App and store coming soon!

Greeting Vidsters!

Its been awhile since I last posted, but that does not mean I have not been working hard on myVidster.  I have been focusing my time on the backend and the mobile platform of myVidster.

Backend work
Being that myVidster is a social bookmarking site and not a 'tube site', we cannot control the source video files.  This causes issues when a video is removed or is changed by the host site.  These dead/changed video bookmarks need to be removed and manually removing these links are very time consuming and is repetitive work.  To solve this problem I have developed site monitoring to track down when a video file has been removed and scripts to verified its removal from the source site before removing them from public view on myVidster.  Also note that these video bookmarks are flagged as broken and removed from public view and the poster still has access to these bookmarks.

Mobile support
Recently I published the iPhone app which was long over due.  I did not announce its release because it was launched before IOS 7 and I was not sure if the app was going to function properly for the new OS.  The latest version of the app was released this week and is IOS 7 ready.  Lets not forget the popular Android app, which you can download from Google Play.


myVidster store 'coming soon'
Want to represent and show your myVidster love to the world (and look good while doing it)?  We will be doing a beta launch of the myVidster store where you can buy your own myVidster t-shirt and other goodies.

Traffic by the numbers
For the curious here are the lastest traffic anaylitcs for the last 30 days.
Pageviews:  310 Million
Visits:  14 Million
Registered users:  442,505

Take care everyone and keep collecting!

Thursday, March 21, 2013

myVidster PRO is back and language support

Greetings Vidsters!  Here is a quick development update for your favorite video sharing site myVidster!

myVidster PRO is back!
By popular demand I have brought back myVidster's PRO membership.  The membership gives you an Ad free experience, PRO badge and is a easy way of showing your love and support for myVidster :)
 

Language support in French and Spanish
If you look at the top right corner of myVidster you can change the language from English to either French or Spanish.  Currently the front end is translated and I am working on getting the user administration translated.  Hopefully I can have the entire site translated by the end of March.

Mobile App updates
I have made several updates to the Android and mobile app, mostly stability fixes.  I developed a native iPhone app, but was unsuccessful in getting it approved for the app store.  All I can say is that I tried, heck I even purchased a Mac Mini to develop the app.  Maybe in the future Apple will relax their guidelines so that great Apps like myVidster can be published.  For now iPhone users please use the mobile app, it works great you just lose the download to phone functionality.

On the bright side I can now say that I am a proud Mac owner ;)
Well that is all for now, keep collecting!

Tuesday, January 8, 2013

myVidster's 2012 year in review


Greetings Vidsters!  2012 was a great year,  myVidster experienced another year of rapid growth.  This growth being all organic, expect for our day of shameless promotion campaign ;).  I added more servers to handle the growth and to maintain an enjoyable user experience.  Here are some stats to give you and an idea of the size of our community.

Stats:
Register users: 314,748
Group membership: 21,807
Android user installs: 34,507
Monthly Unique Visitors:  5.1 Million (current)
Pageviews:  240 Million (current)
 
2012 highlights:
myVidster wins appeal in the 7th circuit count rejecting the claim that embedding is infringement.
myVidster Android and web app reloaded!
myVidster Group Pages.

While this list of accomplishments may appear small, I always focus on quality over quantity.  I spend most of my time improving new and legacy functionally on the site to ensure that users have the best experience.

What to expect for 2013:
The return of the PRO membership!
Localization of myVidster.com (beta launch will support French and Spanish)
myVidster store!

Well that is all for now, thanks for all the love and support and keep collecting!

Saturday, October 13, 2012

myVidster and personal update

Greetings Vidsters!  This is an update on whats been going on with myVidster and myself.  Most of my work on myVidster has been on the backend.  I recently retired a server and replaced it with a larger one.  This was needed to handle the site's growth.  To give you an idea of myVidster's growth here are some stats.

Pageviews (Google Analytics)
August: 162 million
September: 194 million

I have also spent a lot of time on mobile app development and manage to get a 4.0 rating on Google Play!  I know that iPhone users want a native app as well, but I am still undecided on if its worth my time developing a native app and take the risk of Apple rejecting it.  For now use the web app, its has all the same functionality that the native would have with the exception that you cannot download videos.

For personal, I decided to leave the boring Midwest and moved myVidster and myself to Austin TX.  Perfect timing because ACL is this weekend!  Expect to find me at local tech and start-up happy hours and events.

What to expect in the future for myVidster?  Currently I do not know, now that I have a stable mobile app and I have scaled out the site for future growth I now have the time and capacity to brainstorm on new and exciting ideas for myVidster.  If you have any suggestions feel free to contact me or post a comment.

Take care and keep collecting!

Wednesday, September 5, 2012

myVidster mobile app support reloaded!

Greetings Vidsters, I have spent the last two months improving mobile support for both the Android and iPhone/iOS devices.  I will admit that the first version of the mobile app had its laundry list of issues and user experience was OK at best.  Keep in mind that it was my first attempt at developing a mobile app and my goal was to get a 'working' version out just to see if I could do it.  Now that I have gained some experience, I decided to resume development with the goal of creating an app that you will want to use everyday.  Here are the goals I set for myself.

Only display mobile compatible videos
One of the biggest challenges was filtering out the video bookmarks that would not play on your mobile device.  To tackle this issue I had to create a MySQL memory table that keeps tracks of the video bookmarks that are mobile friendly (encoded in h.264).  This table is used to display only the mobile friendly videos on the homepage and in your subscriptions.  Please note that this filtering does not take place when running a search or when you navigate through a users video collection.  To enable filtering go to your setting screen in the app.


Improve the user experience
If you have been a active user of the mobile app then you already know that the user experience (UX) needed an overhaul.  With the help of my friend Ryan, we went though the interface of the app to make navigation more intuitive by adding left/right swipe navigation and redesigned the video display screen.  Features like video history was added and I did some changes to the css to make the app more attractive.

 
Improve performance and stability
Load times for displaying a video bookmark was around 3-10 seconds which is unacceptable for any web or mobile app.  With the used of smart caching and code optimizations load times have been reduce to 2-3 seconds.  Can I get loads times to under a second?  As I gain more experience with mobile development I should be able to reduce the loads times in future updates.  As for stability that is a no brainier, if the app crashes for any reason, I would track down the issue and fix it!

Where can I get this wonderful app?
For Android you can install it from Google Play or you can download APK file from us.

For iPhone please use our web app.  When Apple decides to relax their submission policies then I will submit the app to their app store.

That is all for now, take care and keep collecting!