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6 Suggestions for SuTree: Vertical Video Lessons

SuTree’s motto is “watch & learn” - and the site is a great place to do so. SuTree indexes video lessons from across the web: lessons are submitted to the site by members and editors, and can be rated, commented on, searched, and categorized. The site is clean, and the categories make it easy to drill down to the content you’re looking for. SuTree launched in the beginning of April

The “Submit” process for getting a video onto SuTree allows for thumbnails to be uploaded, tags to be added, and other descriptive information appended. Submissions are added into a Category > Sub-Category > Sub-Category > Sub-Category structure for very granular categorization.

While SuTree has the fundamentals down, its newness shows. In addition to missing a lot of social features (which I assume are in the pipeline), here’s 6 other suggestions for SuTree to move forward:

1. Improve your Search: Search appears to be a literal text string search. i.e.: There’s a video on SuTree called How to Pitch a Pop-Up Tent - searching for “pitch a tent,” however, returns nothing. That does the SuTree index a real disservice. Given the complexity of good search, if I were SuTree, I’d be tempted to just add a search widget and let Google deal with it.
2. Open Up the Taxonomy: Either enable users to suggest categories, or add a full tagging implementation (see next point).
3. Complete your Tagging Implementation: Submitting a link lets you add tags, but from that point on, they aren’t visible. You can’t search on them, there’s no tag cloud, tags aren’t listed for videos… they basically just disappear into the void. Tagging adds real value in a context like this, supplementing/complementing the rigid category taxonomy.
4. Streamline & Automate the Submission Process: SuTree would likely get a lot more submissions if doing so didn’t require entering a bunch of meta-data that can be grabbed programmatically. If SuTree could build a submission process that let a user point a crawler to a video page and walk away, that would be better. Given the diversity of sources on SuTree, however, such an implementation would be difficult; perhaps a teired submission process would be an answer. If the submission is from YouTube, users just need to post the YouTube link. If its from elsewhere, more data is required.
5. Clarify your Submission Practices: When you add video, it appears to go into a queue to be approved by a SuTree editor. Once approved, it goes public. I couldn’t find any verbiage on the site describing this process. Perhaps it does so later in the submission process. Either way, this would be nice to know for both consumers (that SuTree is handpicked, quality video) and submitters (don’t bother submitting crap).
6. Clean Up your Vocabulary: On the same page, SuTree will ask you to both Add and Upload video. Given that you can’t actually upload anything to SuTree, this just ends up being confusing. Pick a single word and use it consistently. “Add” or “Submit” would be good. Given that editors appear to need to approve video before it goes public, “Submit” would probably better as you can’t “add” until approved anyway.

All of that being said, I think SuTree serves a valid need, and does so competently - which is a compliment given that the site launched in early April. I’m looking forward to seeing how SuTree does once its implementation is a little more complete, and more social features in place.

More on SuTree from around the blogosphere:

1. Dumblittleman.com and Amit Agarwal put together great lists of other video-lesson providers.
2. Digital Alchemy compares SuTree to del.icio.us.
3. BizDevBlog points out that SuTree is missing some key social user-promotion elements - a “My Lessons” widget and API for starters.
4. Blonde 2.0 points out that SuTree hasn’t yet connect users in anyway - so the social element is still more or less MIA.

5min, lessons, sutree, tutorials, video youtube

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