Okay, so, I’ve fully jumped into it (as you can see above) and feel as if I have a good perspective on what your intent is and some opportunities for improvement… maybe.
Some Positives…
- The community digs it. They like seeing these quick, unprofessional views of what’s going on behind-the-scenes. These have the potential to “fill in the gaps” while longer form content is being generated / created.
- The ephemeral nature of it is definitely an obvious hat-tip to snapchat and the community “gets it” - I’ve read a few comments from other creators and for those that don’t quite get it… well, it’s a snapchat thing. And that’s a good thing… which leads me to the…
- … Interface, although needing a bit of refining and updating, I don’t mind it not being a full snapchat clone, with all of the bells and whistles and stickers and
… i like the simplicity and please don’t bloat it.
Some Opportunities…
- App is slow and buggy and breaks. Uploads seem to take way too long and button-presses don’t seem to always “get pressed”. Unexpected behavior is normal. I’ve mentioned a few of those things above.
- We must have a way for non-app users to be notified that a new Lens Update has been dropped on desktop / web. This will provide obvious on-ramps for downloading the app and keeping those folks engaged.
- A way to respond or at least “like” an update. We live and die by responses to our content and folks have had to jump to older posts to “comment” on a Lens Update, which is obvious bad or disjointed in form. My gut is saying that we can add a comment layer, but, that might not be the best solution…
- At first I was a bit upset about not being able to create Lenses for specific Tiered Groups but that’s because we’ve spent the last 5 or 6 months optimizing our Tiers and Pricing and we’re emotionally in the mode of making sure we’re delivering the right type of content to the right paying customer. But, after giving it a good test today I realized that I don’t believe that’s what Lens is really for… but, you tell me. Technically-speaking, creating multiple streams of Lenses based on Tier feels like an engineering nightmare (I’m a software engineer) so… I feel the pain on this one…
- Instead, I think Lens, if optimized, can be a massive tool for not only getting more folks onboard but also upselling (e.g. inside sales-ish). I think combining the optimizations with the right education for us creators… we can find and strike the right balance. If we can also get more signals for those who aren’t on the app… this could be a big winner.
Please continue to iterate and keep it simple. I think I “feel” as if it’s found a good “spot” within our larger framework and strategy… but, I’ll give some more feedback after a week or so.
Rock on.