A COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS OF VIDEO-SHARING PLATFORMS

Transcription

1 Romain SIMON CPR A COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS OF VIDEO-SHARING PLATFORMS WITH A FOCUS ON YOUTUBE AND DAILYMOTION Web Interaction Design and Communication Spring 2012 Copenhagen Business School 1

2 TABLE OF CONTENTS 1- Introduction and research question Literature Review Research Method Data collection and analysis General questions Have you ever heard of the following video-sharing websites? How often do you use the following? If you use Dailymotion, do you use Facebook Connect? Which one correspond the best to the following assertions? What would you change on Dailymotion to be more attractive? Analysis and integration with course theory Discussions and conclusions

3 Abst ract The aim of t his paper was t o analyze video-sharing websit es, and underst and what makes users prefer eit her Dailymot ion or Yout ube. Yout ube is preferred rather than Dailymotion, and I found users complained about Dailymot ion usabilit y. I finally t ried t o give some ways t o improve Dailymot ion s int erface by using more st ruct ured pages, wit h less information and advertisement, but also by using expressive int erfaces and avoiding being qualified as a frustrating interface by avoiding a t oo long wait ing t ime before videos. 1- Introduction and research question The purpose of this paper is to study video-sharing websites in a web interaction prism, with a focus on Youtube and Dailymotion. Both websites have been founded in 2005, but Youtube developed worldwide more rapidly and was bought by Google, whereas Dailymotion remained known mostly in France. On January 2012, Dailymotion integrated with Facebook Open Graph 2.0. In two months, the application was added by 9 million Facebook users, publishing driving an average traffic of 6 million visitors to Dailymotion per day 1. Thanks to that partnership with Facebook, Dailymotion is gaining an international dimension, whereas it was often considered as a French videosharing website. But will this traffic be sufficient to be a strong competitor, or are they some factors that will avoid it being so? I will try to answer this question by focusing on usability, expressive interfaces and cognitive aspects. 2- Literature Review Boketoft (2009) evaluated the two video-sharing websites Youtube and Dailymotion using Nielsen s Heuristic Evaluation. The heuristics used by Boketoft are (Nielsen, 2006): Consistency and standards, recognition rather than recall, flexibility and efficiency of use, aesthetic and minimalist design, help and documentation. In December 2011, Youtube changed radically its interface with a new homepage 2. Nielsen (2010) also revised the list of Heuristics : visibility of systems status, match between system and the real world, user control and freedom, consistency and standards, error prevention, recognition rather than recall, flexibility and minimalist design, help users recognize diagnose and recover from errors, help and documentation. 1 Himel A. (April 4, 2012) Early Success Stories: Video and Open Graph Facebook Developers blog 2 Crum C. (December1, 2011) New Youtube Homepage Launches Web Pro News 3

4 3- Research Method A questionnaire was made using Google Docs. It was short to ensure people will not get bored answering it and was divided into 3 sections. A fist one asking for general demographic information, including age and nationality. A second one with 2 question: Have you ever heard of the following video-sharing websites? that could be answered by Yes or No for a list of different websites, and How often do you use the following? that could be answered from Never to Everyday. A third one with more specific questions about Dailymotion and Youtube (respondents were asked to visit Youtube and Dailymotion if the didn t know about them) including If you use Dailymotion, do you use Facebook Connect, with a short explanation of what it is, and Which one corresponds the best to the following assertions? with different propositions. The following answers were proposed to the respondents to make a discriminative choice: Youtube, probably Youtube, both, probably Dailymotion, Dailymotion. The questionnaire finally ended with a more qualitative open question: What would you change on Dailymotion to be more attractive? 4- Data collection and analysis General questions At first, some general questions were answer to respondents, such as age and nationality. 37 people responded to the survey, who were 25 year old in average. 21 out of 37 were French Have you ever heard of the following video-sharing websites? All respondents knew about Youtube and Dailymotion. A majority knew about Vimeo, whereas a minority knew about Rutube and Youku. None of the respondents were Russian or Asian; otherwise we can guess more respondents would have known about these two websites Yes No 0 Fig 1 - Have you ever heard of the following video-sharing websites? 4

5 4.3 - How often do you use the following? To this question, respondents were asked to answer a frequency of usage for each videosharing site. Youtube is clearly and without surprise the most used website. Dailymotion and Vimeo are used on a less frequent basis, whereas Rutube and Youku are never used by respondents Everyday Every week Every month Rarely Never 5 0 Youtube Dailymotion Vimeo Rutube Youku Other Fig How often do you use the following? By differentiating answers from nationality, we notice there is a real difference in the usage of Dailymotion between French and other nationalities. All French respondents ever used Dailymotion, whereas 25% of the other respondents never used it. French people also use Dailymotion on a more regular basis, as twice more respondents use it every week. French Never 0% Other Rarely 38% Every month 19% Everyday 19% Every week 24% Never 25% Rarely 38% Everyday 19% Every week 12% Every month 6% Fig Frequency Dailymotion s usage by nationality 5

6 4.4 - If you use Dailymotion, do you use Facebook Connect? Event thought the form mentioned below the question When you are watching a video, an activity is automatically posted on your Facebook feed. If you can watch Dailymotion's videos on Facebook, the answer is Yes. 21% of Dailymotion s users did not know if they use Facebook Connect. Only 23% of respondents declared using it, but we can guess a part of respondents declared No because they probably thought they did not. The question should maybe have been mentioned is most simple term, such as Do you watch Dailymotion s videos on Facebook? as it is now required to use Dailymotion s application to do so. I don't know 21% Yes 23% No 56% Fig 3 - If you use Dailymotion, do you use Facebook Connect? Which one correspond the best to the following assertions? Youtube is in all cases better rated than its competitor Dailymotion. It is also considered as having more advertising than Dailymotion. Well-organized homepage Best quality of video Aesthetic and pleasant to use Fast to load Easy to find videos you like Easy to share with friends Lots of advertising Lots of videos 0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 70% 80% 90% 100% Youtube Probably Youtube Both Probably Dailymotion Dailymotion Fig 4.1 Which one correspond the best to the following assertions? 6

7 An interesting fact is that French people tend to globally rate Dailymotion as good as Youtube whereas other respondents are more likely to find Youtube a better website. 60% 50% 40% 30% 20% Other French 10% 0% Youtube Probably Youtube Both Probably Dailymotion Dailymotion Fig 4.2 Percentage of total responses mentioned (all questions except the advertising one) What would you change on Dailymotion to be more attractive? Many respondents mentioned Dailymotion should have more videos and videos of better quality to compete with Youtube. Making Dailymotion s videos faster to load was also mentioned several times. Respondents thought Dailymotion should have a cleaner user-interface (less overloaded) and that the whole design seems quite outdated. They suggested improving the homepage and changing the global design. It seems the website has also too much advertising and respondents are annoyed with the advertisement before the video starts. Respondents also complained about how difficult it is to find other videos: They suggested improving the search engine and the related videos section, as it is often not pertinent. Other request included a better rating organization, and a too intrusive Facebook application that asks for permissions. One respondent suggested: make it more like Youtube. 5- Analysis and integration with course theory The questionnaire showed that Youtube and Dailymotion are known by all respondents (Fig. 1) but Youtube is used more frequently than Dailymotion (Fig. 2.1). French respondents use Dailymotion more often than their peers (Fig. 2.2) and are more likely to consider it as a strong competitor. (Fig. 4.2) Respondents considered Youtube as presenting more advertising than Youtube. (Fig 4.1) In reality, Dailymotion presents certainly more advertising than Youtube as it displays two banners on the homepage, two banners on video pages, always a video advertisement before the video, and then a semi-transparant advertisement on top of the video. Youtube displays advertisement only on popular video pages: only one banner, sometimes a video 7

8 advertisement before the video, and sometimes a semi-transparant advertisement on top of the video. Actually, Dailymotion is surely more intrusive with advertisement as the video advertisement is always displayed and can t be skipped. We will focus on the homepage interface of the two video-sharing websites, as it was mentioned by participants as an important point to improve (see question part 4.6). Fig Dailymotion s homepage (as on May 13, 2012) Fig Youtube s homepage (as on May 13, 2012) Dailymotion s homepage displays a large video, and then categories with a selected video. Youtube has a personalized homepage : one for non-logged in users, which displays category on the left and most popular videos in the center, and another one for logged-in users which is personalized with videos from the subscribed channels. The left menu offer also the possibility to see videos shared by friends on Google+ or Facebook adding a more social side to the site. 8

9 It is interesting to look at both pages on a cognitive point of view. Youtube s homepage for non-logged in users displays a long list of categories on the left. As it displays more than seven elements, it is not possible to remember them all (Miller, 1956). This page is only displayed for non-logged in users - users that don t come often - and caring about the recall-directed step is then useless. Youtube focused more on the recognition-based step by adding icons, which help to find more rapidly a category of video (Lansdale and Edmonds, 1992) whereas Dailymotion displays only the name of the category, with a highlighted video for this category. As the picture of the highlighted video is not representative of the category and changes everyday, the recognition-based step is even more difficult. Moreover, videos are represented as a list on Youtube (one video per line) whereas it is represented as a grid on Dailymotion (4 videos per line), which makes it more difficult to find a video, because the eyes have to move more. Moreover, Dailymotion does not separate the different videos with a border, whereas Youtube separates them with a line (although it is not so visible on the screenshot), affecting the user perception : it is easier to locate items grouped using a border (Weller, 2004) Youtube uses expressive interfaces in its rating system with thumb up and a thumb down whereas Dailymotion uses stars, which is less expressive. This result as a more enjoyable experience (Mullet and Sano, 1995). Respondents mentioned they would improve Dailymotion with a better rating organization, and this could be a way to improve it. We also note that Youtube displays only the option to like or dislike, whereas Dailymotion displays its small star-rating system but also social media buttons which confuses the user by giving him too much choice. Dailymotion has a too much frustrating interface has it involves watching an advertisement before each video and then waiting for the video to load. The too overloaded design with text, previews of videos, links, and advertising makes it also difficult to find information. (Rogers, Sharp, Preece, 2011 p.139) Fig Dailymotion s rating system (as on May 2012) Fig Youtube s rating system (as on May 2012) 9

10 6- Discussions and conclusions It is clear that the dominant position of Youtube over Dailymotion can t be explained only through the interaction design prism. As mentioned by respondents, the number of videos present on the video-sharing website matters a lot, as well as some other factors such as strategy or the fact that Youtube was bought by Google, which gave it its international dimension. Besides, now that Dailymotion has the opportunity to compete with Youtube and is gaining an international dimension thanks to its partnership with Facebook, it should improve its user interface. Dailymotion did not change very much since it launched in 2005, whereas Youtube made incremental changes and a critical shift in If Dailymotion wants to compete with Youtube, it should think about a redesign too. Not to be more like Youtube like a respondent said, but to be a better Dailymotion. REFERENCES Boketoft C.O. (2009) Heuristic Evaluation of the Video Sharing WebSites YouTube and DailyMotion Department of Computing Science, Umeå University, Sweden Lansdale M. and Edmonds E. (1992) Using memory for events in the design of personal filing systems International Journal of Human-Computer Studies 26, Miller G. (1956) The magical number seven, plus or minus two: Some limits on our capacity for processing information Psychological Review 63, Mullet K. and Sano D. (1995) Designing Visual Interfaces Prentice Hall Nielsen J. (2006) Ten Usability Heuristics Nielsen J. (2010) Ten Usability Heuristics (revised version) Rogers Y., Sharp H., Preece J. (2011) Interaction Design beyond human-computer interaction 3 rd edition Weller D. (2004) The effects of contrast and density on visual web search Usability News n 62 10