TechFold - Bold tech & web commentary

Bold tech & web commentary

TechFold is technology discussion, commentary, reviews, and opinions from well outside the valley. There's no koolaid to drink here, and TechFold is not in SL, or on Twitter.

FireAnt.tv - Confusion

I had hoped to post a full review of FireAnt - the social / vlog player and community, but I’ve been stymied by a buggy and confusing website.

As I understand it, FireAnt consists of a downloaded desktop client, and a social hub website. I couldn’t test the client as I couldn’t find it to download, and problems with the website began in registration, where it ran into PHP missing parameter errors. The prominent appeals to try “FireAnt Beta v2″ dead-end with a send-your-email-address-into-the-void form, and there doesn’t seem to be anywhere to download “v1″ client or anything else.

In the end, what I was left with was a website of videos organized by content channels, played within the site with QuickTime, and including post-roll advertisements. You can rate and tag videos, and add them to your “playlist” - a feature which doesn’t seem to do anything without the desktop application. Tagging and well-thought out content categories make it easy to find good video, and the notion of the website and desktop client staying in sync (i.e.: building your playlist) is appealing if un-testable at the moment.

The social opportunities on the site itself have been missed, or at least unrealized - on the website there are no comments, no “who else liked this video,” no “other people who liked this also enjoyed,” or any functionality beyond a basic web-media player. Clicking the “People” tab takes you to a search form only; the one trial search I did yeilded a person who’s playlist consisted of pr0n - something to do with a “mexicum threesome,” which I decided not to watch. Perhaps the desktop client more fully realizes the social potential here, or perhaps the website is awaiting a future release to do so.

So - I was pretty disappointed. When I originally stumbled across FireAnt, I’d hoped to have discovered a JOOST in sheep’s clothing - especially after reading TechCrunch’s coverage (FireAnt Just Rocks). With the site offering user-created content channels and touting the fact that…

FireAnt has 19,835 channels and 1,110,256 episodes, and adding more each day!

…it seems like the issues at hand are (a) getting the desktop client back on the site, and (b) buidling out the social infrastructure on the site itself.

I hope their upcoming Beta release has some great features.

blogging, fireant, joost, mexicum, social, threesome vlogs

10 Responses to “FireAnt.tv - Confusion”

Joshua Kinberg | April 16th, 2007 at 7:02 pm

Hi TechFold,

I responded to your other initial review on April 10th and commented that the FireAnt client software is still being tested, and as stated on our website, we’re accepting sign-ups for beta testers before releasing the next version. There’s no change to that status in the past 6 days and we’re still accepting beta testers for our upcoming general release. I also stated that we’re not a Joost-light and are not in competition with them. Joost is a streaming video service with a very different business model.

Again, I’m unsure as to why a second review of FireAnt was written six days after the first one, since I previously stated we’re signing up beta testers only at this time and I would personally let you know when this product is available for download. There have been no other announcements or public statements about FireAnt recently as we’re in transition. I’ll definitely add you to our announcement list and appreciate your interest.

Yes, we removed download links to the earlier versions of our client software as we will be switching to the new client and encouraging users to upgrade once we’ve announced our release. This is not uncommon.

As for the social features on our website — We just released a small subset that included some social features, with the ability to make a profile, add tags, ratings, and build a playlist. There will be more to come, including some of the features you are suggesting.

All of the media content on our website is aggregated via RSS and linked and embedded from other websites. FireAnt provides a search and discovery interface with links to the original content producers. We do not attach any any advertisements onto the content. It appears you’ve stumbled across content that had its own post-roll advertisements courtesy of Revver.com. Again, FireAnt displays the content as-is, without changing it in any way.

In terms of finding a user with a pr0n video added to their playlist (or tag) — we don’t censor our users directly, but we also do not encourage this type of content. Unfortunately, sometimes links to pr0n make it into our system, mostly from other social bookmarking sources such as Delicious. To focus on a random video added to a random user’s playlist is overlooking our huge media directory of excellent and safe-for-work content, which I think we do a pretty good job of promoting on our front page.

I definitely appreciate your interest and will alert you when our new beta software is available for download.

Best regards,
Josh

http://GetFireAnt.com
Joshua Kinberg | April 16th, 2007 at 7:15 pm

Hi TechFold,

Here’s your response to my comments on the original post on April 10, 2007:
http://techfold.com/2007/04/10/before-joost-there-was-fireant/#comment-28

I’m not sure where your confusion comes from as it was clearly stated in your comment thread and on the FireAnt website that the FireAnt client software is “coming soon” and we are accepting sign-ups at this time only.

Best,
Josh
shelby | April 16th, 2007 at 8:36 pm

Mr. Kinberg seems a bit peeved.

Surely he can’t be serious trying to blame you for calling him out on a wretched site, confusing marketing (?) message and non-existent software.

Why would the fireant software be “coming soon” when its been out for 2 years already? That’s confusing. Can’t download anything even if you wanted to. Hmmmm. Yup confusing.
Rod | April 16th, 2007 at 10:09 pm

Hi Josh - thanks for your comments. I was aware of the beta program, but expected to be able to download and try the v1 client that TechCrunch so positively reviewed. Given that positive response, and the fact that most of the FireAnt value seems to be delivered through the client, I’m surprised that no version would be available. I suppose its my bad luck to stumble across fireant in the window between releases, but I think it would be reasonable for any prospective, enthusiastically anticipatory user to be frustrated in these circumstances.

Refering to my original post, I posted about FireAnt again because I hadn’t had time the first trip through the site to register or otherwise dig into its featues, and I did mention in my comments that “…I’m looking forward to trying out the FireAnt player and making a proper post about this.”

Calling out the pr0n was a low blow. I was frustrated at that point, and amused that the only “find people” search I actually tried led me to that.

Post-roll adverts - thanks for clarifying.

Anyway, to re-iterate, I’ll look forward to hearing about FireAnt in the future, and all the best ’till then.

-R
shelby | June 12th, 2007 at 2:44 am

Wondering what’s going on with the software… It’s been two months and there is still no software to download.

Duhhhhh.
Rod | June 12th, 2007 at 6:23 am

Funny you should mention that. I just checked back there yesterday two and noticed the same lack-of-activity you did. I hope they’re keeping it together over there…
Congrats to FireAnt on acquisition « TechFold | September 14th, 2007 at 10:44 am

[…] I revisited FireAnt a week later (expecting some updates), to receive website errors, and a sputtering, angry response from founder Josh Kinberg. […]
sandy oldham | September 19th, 2007 at 12:02 am

kinberg is no visionary that’s for sure.
They pulled a working beta version off the website months ago, in lieu of a registration form?

Then like other start-up websites I enjoyed visiting regularly for fresh and lively content, fireant.tv just sat there, idle?

I was an active user of the old version of Fireant but threw it in the trash after months of false promises from kinberg that a new version was coming soon.

Maybe he should consider a career move to used cars?
David | October 31st, 2007 at 8:15 pm

I bought I Zune with the promise of fireant-powered podcasting via feedyourzune. Now I can’t seem to find a copy of the software. Is it dead, along with podcasting on the Zune?
Ridolph | May 25th, 2008 at 11:38 pm

Still Dead…. Sad.