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PodClass - online course startup or wiki platform?

Podclass is another startup in the online course/learning space. Like video upstarts SuTree or 5min, Podclass aims to be a community oriented clearing house of online courses; unlike other options, however, Podclass goes beyond video, and wraps a paid-content model around it all:

Podclass has been designed to enable multiple users to collaborate on any topic and create course content for group learning. The course content can later be sold as a paid online course or distributed freely. “The option to sell content makes Podclass unique,” says Gil. “It’s just one more reason for people to contribute.” [from Press Release]

Correct me if I’m wrong, but that sounds like a multimedia wiki with an optional pay wall. And that’s not a bad thing.

At the moment, Podclass is pretty quiet with a limited number of courses and communities. Founder Gary Gil is working hard to capitalize on some hype, however, starting with a collaboratively built course about monetizing Facebook - certainly a topic of interest as of late. See the press release for more.

A recommendation for Podclass after reading the press release: back off the hype train. That press release hits on every buzz word - social media, 2.0, digg, facebook, crowdsourcing, etc. Hyped keywords, however, are by definition a flash in the pan - and most of those mentioned have flashed and gone already. If you’re serious about building the business in the long run, focus on communicating the core value proposition, not on trying to piggyback pageviews on buzzwords.

Which brings us to that core proposition. As with any content startup, Podclass faces the chicken/egg conundrum - without compelling content, there’s no community; without community there’s no compelling content. Differentiating in this space and attracting content and community are not easy task - but not impossible either.

My suggestion? Follow the Apple example. Apple entered into a crowded DAP market by creating an offering that was overpoweringly superior in a few key points (synch simplicity, design), and had parity in all others. Podclass needs to pick two relevant service differentiation points, build the crap out of them, and then communicate & evangelize them.

Second Suggestion: Compelling seed content. Monetizing Facebook sounds like a good start, but there’s a couple of other perennial winners that will get traffic and backlinks: SEO springs to mind as a natural. Contact some pop-blogger SEO gurus and get some interviews on camera, and throw them up - a series of half-hour webcam interviews would be a popular resource.

Anyway: Bottom line is that Podclass looks to be a solid, if not overly differentiated offering in a crowded field. A focus on the differentiating essentials and building out an attractive content library IMHO would position Podclass for solid growth.

5min, course, learning, podclass, sutree tutorials

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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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