The joy of creating for creators

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Round B

“It’s a challenge to not only develop a product that people will love, but also one that will make them create products that others will love,” writes Piggy CEO Shaul Olmert

Shaul Olmert 13:5519.09.21

There is a sense of magic when someone you don’t know uses your product in another country. It is not obvious to me that my instinct is to contact each user, thank them personally and explain in detail how we built the company before listening to their detailed feedback on our product. When the previous company I founded and served as CEO, Playbuzz, launched their product (a platform for creating interactive online content), I sat at my computer for hours waiting for someone to use it.
“If people refer to their product as” their child “, then in our case we have grandchildren: not only our product, but also the products that were created with its help.” Photo: Shutterstock

I landed in New York one morning, and while walking down the endless line of immigration services, I checked the company’s data system for a moment and noticed that while flying across the Atlantic, a content page was being created on the Playbuzz platform by a creator was unfamiliar. Excited, I called the office in Israel, where my colleagues chilled my enthusiasm. It turned out that the page was created by a friend of a co-worker who asked him to test our platform for them.

It took a few more weeks for the first content element to be created by a user unknown to us. And then another and another. In the company’s heyday as an open platform for consumers (today the company charges for the use of its highly developed and widespread platform), tens of thousands of different content from around the world in all languages ​​were created every day, on all subjects and with varying levels of quality and professionalism.

At some point you get used to everything, even success, and I admit that there were days when I was disappointed and even angry when “only” a few thousand pieces of content were created on our platform. Only occasionally, during the routine of carefully reviewing usage data and tracking statistics, did I pause for a moment and admire the wonderful fact that strangers, whom I don’t even know, from here in town or in many other places have a product of my. use friends and i made. The same product that investors initially scoffed at when I presented them with the vision behind it. The same product that was originally filled with bugs and always crashed when it came down to it. The same product that kept me in front of my computer screen for days and nights updating its stats page in the hope that someone would actually use it.

And now, a decade later, I’ve started a new business and I’ve come back to those fascinating and exciting days when people are starting to use the Piggy content creation platform. Unlike Playbuzz, this time our target audience is young people who are not professional content writers, the creative process is much faster and easier (the world has evolved a lot in these ten years) and yet the feeling is the same.

Wait again with fear and anxiety to see the first users, excited again when these users manage to produce something of value that will make them happy, clench their teeth again when the product crashes, and become addicted to constant data tracking again. In the meantime, we only occasionally remember to pause and admire the miracle that people value our product, that our vision, which sounds unfounded to many, is taking shape and becoming an existing fact.

Many in the high-tech community know these feelings. Artists, chefs and other professionals also know the immense satisfaction of knowing that your work benefits and is valued by other people. In the case of Piggy (and Playbuzz at the time), the excitement adds another level: the fact that our users not only use our product, they use it to create something new, their own product.

In Playbuzz’s case, these were quizzes, polls, interactive articles, and other forms of content. At Piggy, these are stories, school assignments, invitations to events, personal homepages, presentations and other forms of content that people produce with our app. The excitement doubles in this case. If people refer to their product as “their child”, then in our case we have grandchildren: not only our product, but also the products created with its help, which have their own life cycle and use.

Managing a community of users is a fascinating and challenging craft. When it comes to a creative community, there is another aspect. A good product defines in advance the desired result that its use will bring or produce and is designed to guide the user in achieving that result. defeat the opponent, etc.).

It’s the same with Piggy. We have a clear goal, although it is more abstract and can take different forms. The goal is that people can produce content, but there are no limits to the variety of forms and shapes that content can take. One of the interesting conflicts in developing a creative platform is finding the balance between creating freedoms for users to express themselves in a way that is natural to them and creating boundaries and guidance to help make this possible them to achieve a satisfactory product.

For example, my partner Tom Pachys at Playbuzz decided to limit the number of possible answers in our quiz questions. Quite a few users were annoyed about it and my instinct was to accept their request, because after all, the customer is always right. Tom taught me that the customer doesn’t always know the best and that part of our job is to set boundaries that help the user focus, get a better result, and have a better experience, also at the expense of the Frustration during the process.

Tom’s decision was based on data showing that people who wanted to add multiple possible answers to each question in the quiz usually got tired in the middle and didn’t complete their page. He decided for her that he knew better than her what was right for her.

In contrast, sometimes it is better to allow users creative freedom rather than guide them. In Piggy, for example, we allow the user to produce whatever comes to mind without first deciding which format to choose. That said, you don’t need to know in advance whether what you’re creating is an article, blog post, greeting card, presentation, or some other form of content. We invite you to just create and sometimes realize what exactly is being produced as it happens.

Another aspect of content creation platforms is understanding that what is right for the user is not necessarily what you, the developer, have defined as the desired outcome. We see people using Piggy to produce very impressive works, adhering to well-made content and a (in our perception) correct understanding of the medium: short texts, large and legible fonts, correct division of the narrative into pages, stylish and accurate design, and more.

But there are also some who produce content that looks terribly bad at first glance: a lot of dense text, no proofreading and a lot of spelling or grammatical errors, the level of graphic design is unprofessional and that is clear to us we will be on our sample page do not link to this document. However, the person who created this document did not create it for us to love, but rather to express his or her thoughts and be correct for his own use or that of the person with whom he shared the document.

For example, if we take a look at the PowerPoint presentations people are producing, it seems that many of them are not polished and don’t really reflect the capabilities of the program. And it is precisely at this point that we remember that our users are not trying to create to our liking or to prove the effectiveness of every function in our product. They produce what they want, what feels right to them, and a lack of fine-tuning or a lack of professionalism are authentic and therefore not a disadvantage.

Just like most of the stories people write using word processors that don’t get them a Pulitzer, and most cameras don’t produce pictures worthy of hanging in a museum, Piggy has no purpose for people to necessarily create masterpieces. Some do it like this invitation or
blog entry, and some produce content that might not get applauded by a professional, but is no less than excellent for its purpose and needs.

Throughout my career I have focused on content creation platforms. Personally, I like to try to produce with new tools. For years I have downloaded every creative software that I came across out of curiosity. My thesis was on content creation platforms, and the companies I founded or worked for, like SundaySky, Playbuzz, and now Piggy, are all in this space. It’s a challenge not only to create a product that people will love, but also one that will make them create products that other people will love, but the satisfaction when they do that is truly unique.

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