If you’re a regular reader, you’ll know of the problems I’ve had with StartYourTube since I created FlightSimTube. If you’re not and want to catch up, read my previous posts here and here.
Over the past few days, they’ve changed their name to BoostCast (I have to keep looking it up, the name just won’t stick in my mind!).
In their defence (and I hope I’m not tempting fate here), they’ve been pretty stable over the past couple of weeks. They’re also clearly working on the site and adding additional functionality, which is a good sign that they want it to work as much as I do.
Along with the name change, we now have:
- A new video player. It looks a little more slick than the original one. They’ve also entered into a partnership with Adotube, so you can embed ads into uploaded video. It has to be said, most of them look very intrusive, although the “post-roll” implementation looks okay
- Soon, I’ll be able to send a message to all members. This is something I’ve been looking for since launch, so well done for implementing it
- “Page Advertising management for each different blog member” - not quite sure what this means yet!
Things aren’t quite perfect yet, though. As part of the name (and domain) change, they’ve asked paying customers (i.e. myself) to change Name Servers. However, my attempt to do so resulted in an error message stating “Name Server has not been registered”. I contacted BoostCast and for once I’m pleased to say they replied quickly saying they were looking into it and that I should continue to use the old StartYourTube name server for now. Looks like someone missed something on the check list! Let’s hope it doesn’t result in any downtime during the transition.
I’m happy now that I stuck with them through the initial troubles. The site is becoming pretty popular now and visitors seem to like it. Visitors seem to stay on the site for a while once they’re there - I’m getting an average of around 6 minutes spent on the site, with an average of 6 “actions” per visitor and a bounce rate of 34%, which tells me that people seem quite happy to hang around and look over the site.
I’m still confused over the name change. Techcrunch reported on the matter, stating:
StartYourTube says that the company has decided on the name change on its own accord. Apparently users of the service want their content to stand on its own, without any kind of implied affiliation to YouTube
I find this kinda hard to believe. Switching domains during a period when you’re trying to build up a customer base is a pretty daft thing to do, so I can only assume some pressure has been applied.
Anyway, so long as they keep their uptime sorted and don’t allow any more dodgy videos to creep through, I can live with the new name.
