Let's talk about *Promote

So it's been a week since we've crossed the Rubicon to VS5. I wanted to discuss one of the new features that may be causing some confusion.

@lucky760 and I have tried to listen to Sifters on improvements and things that aren't working - and hope most of you feel like that's the case.

For the new promote, we're still taking feedback and I want to make sure that everyone understands why we made the change.

Let me start with how it <em>used</em> to work: If you had the power points, you could *promote as many posts at you like. During peak US times we'd have as many as 10 promoted videos on the front page. Because there were so many - we felt that it wasn't serving its purpose. Posts would be promoted, lost in a sea of other promotes and then fade as soon as the promote wore off in a few hours. Sometimes the promote would give a post the traction it needed - sometimes not.

The way *promote works now is very different. We've devoted the absolute primo real estate to promoted videos at the top of the page and promotes will never expire based on time alone.

The three most recent posts are pasted at the top of the page - with the newest on the left and the oldest on the right. When a new *promote comes along, the oldest one on the right, falls off that top panel and becomes just a regular post again.

Here's a little diagram:

<img src = "http://dl.dropbox.com/u/288567/promoted.jpg">

Of course if three *promotes were done in a row on three different videos, the complete promoted panel would be refreshed.

What we're hoping, is that Sifters will act like the curators they are - build a little bit of cultural custom around etiquette for this and only *promote when they think it's right. This may cause conflict - but I don't think so. When possible we like to err on the side of letting people deal with each other and work things out.

We'd like to try it at least for a month and see if it sticks - if not, we may move to another model. We're definitely keen to get ideas and criticism on the new system.