piksie!

Those of you who follow my blog will notice a shift in my focus in the coming days. As you all know, :piksie.com is still in beta and we've been primarily focused on two things:

1. Making sure that we handle any issues that may arise from Beta software
2. Increase the amount of useful content offered to consumers

This double focus has worked well up to this point. Augmented by our Best Video Contest, we were able to find some talented people who wanted to share their knowledge with the rest of the world through their videos. We will continue to make :piksie.com a desirable platform for those who want to share their knowledge and passion with others through product videos (Producers) or simply by providing product information (MVPs).

With that said, I feel that the time has come for :piksie.com to provide really useful information to consumers that will assist them with their purchasing decisions. This is a key step in preparing :piksie.com for its "real" function: open marketplace for consumer products. In other words, selling products.

Therefore, I will now shift the focus of my blogs to providing useful information that will help consumers. I encourage all of you to do the same.

While trying to provide useful information to consumers, I'll try to operate based on two simple principles:

• Provide information "In Plain English" (IPE)
• Provide "practical" information that will help consumers who are trying to make purchasing decisions

This second point is very important indeed. I see lots of information on the Internet both in the form of blogs and videos and feel that only a small percentage of that information have practical value. I see two trends that I don't find particularly useful:

• Some tend to simply copy the format used by others. This is much more noticeable in videos. As I mentioned in my previous blog posts, I don't particularly find talking head lectures or taking a product out of the box videos very useful.
• Another issue I see is that the "expert" in the video or the blog tries very hard to keep things accurate. In the process, the material loses its appeal. The other problem with this approach is that the material is no longer practical because it tends to become generic and theoretical.

I always remind myself that "Many criticize but only a few offer solutions". So, going forward, I'll use my blog as a vehicle to provide useful and practical information about products that -- I hope -- consumers will find useful.