Strmz Blast FAQ

Check the About Strmz Blast page.

It depends. You don't need a Strmz Blast account if all you want is to browse through the video channels and comments submitted by other Strmz Blast users.

But if you want to really get the most out of Strmz Blast, have your own personal Featured page, submit video channels, vote on video channels, leave comments, etc. then yes, you need a Strmz Blast account.

To fully experience Strmz Blast, we invite you to do create an account. You can always cancel it later at any time.

Click on the Submit video channel link in the left menu and enter the URL of the video channel you'd like to submit. After that, you'll need to enter a title, a brief descripion of the video channel and select the most appropriate category for the video channel you're submitting.

That's the number of up/down votes the video channel has received so far.

Depending on the "theme" (see My Settings), next to the number of votes, you will see either two small thumbs up/down icons, two up/down arrows or two text links:

Just click on the one you want, and your vote will be casted.

Once you vote on a video channel, you can not vote on it again nor change your mind. What you voted will be reflected by a grey thumb/arrow: it will be pointing up if you voted "up" or down if you voted..."down" :-)

Simple. If you liked the video channel and it's something you would recommend, then vote "up". If you didn't like it and it's something you definitely wouldn't recommend, then vote "down". Anything in between? You could think of it as "if I had to choose one, which one would it be?" or simply skip voting and move on to the next video channel.

"My Favorites" is a collection of those video channels that you particularly liked, kind of like your browser favorites/bookmarks.

You can add a video channel to your favorites by clicking on the circled image with a + in it that appears next to each video channel title:

Other themes, instead of the image, you'll see a link that says "Save":

Once added to your favorites, the circle is replaced by a yellow ribbon (or by the text "Fav!", depending on what theme you're using).

Click on the video channel title.

You can click on either the "Join discussion..." link at the end of the description, or on the "Comment (x)" link (where X is the number of comments already made).

No. Although your Featured page will only get video channels based only on what your friends think of them, when you engage in a conversation with other Strmz Blast users, the conversation cannot be broken.

• My Featured page
  This is supposedly your entry page to Strmz Blast. It contains four different blocks of information:
  • Alerts
    Here you will receive different alerts, so you know what's been happening since last time you visited. For example, you could be notified that someone has added you as a friend, or that someone has replied to a comment you've made, etc.

  • My friends
    An excerpt of the last news video channels that reached your Featured page (more on that later).

  • Last comments
    A quick list of the video channels where you last left a comment. This way, you don't have to remember what video channels were the last you commented, and can quickly and easily see if there are new comments, follow up on the conversation, etc.

  • Last voted
    Another quick list, this time showing the latest video channels you voted. Like with the last comments block, this allows you to easily monitor how the latest video channels you voted are evolving.

• My friends
  This is where the most interesting submitted video channels, as determined by your friends, will appear. Not all video channels that receive a positive vote by some of your friends may necesarily appear in this page. Only those that obtain certain ranking or score will. In short, this is your friend for really interesting stuff.

  You can, however, from your My Settings page, modify this behavior and, if you like, set it up so that al video channels submitted or voted up by at least one of your friends will appear in "My friends" page. Bottom line: you're in control, and it's very easy to do.

• Featured
  If "My friends" was presenting you the most interesting news according to your friends, here you'll see what the most interesting news are according to all Strmz Blast users. Note that not one video channel stays ever as the first one in the Featured area. That is, when a video channel makes it on the Featured area, the rest of video channels move down one position - even if those video channels have received more votes.

• Upcoming
  This is where you see all the video channels recently submitted, regardless of whether the person who submitted them is your friend or not.
• Top
  This is where you see ALL video channels, showing first those that have recived the most positive votes.

• Profile
  Here you can see and edit your profile info.

  You can also see your site stats: How many video channels you've submitted, votes you've made, how many people have looked at your profile, and how many people you've selected as friends, as well as how many people have selected you as a friend (your fans).

  Folllowing the "friends" and "fans" links in the Stats box, you can actually see who those people are, and add/remove them as your friends anytime you want.

• Favorites
  Here you can see what video channels you've marked as "Favorite". That way, in addition to vote up/down on video channels other people send, you can keep a collection of those sites or video channels that you particularly liked.

  The main difference between your Favorites and anything else, is that you can modify the title and description of your favorites, so you can describe them however it makes sense to you. After all, they are your favorites. Note however that when you actually go to the video channel page in Strmz Blast, the original title and description are preserved.

• Video channels
  This option will show you three different sub-options:
  • Submitted
    A list in reverse chronological order of all the video channels you've submitted.

  • Voted
    A list in reverse chronological order of all the video channels you've voted on.

  • Comments
    A list in reverse chronological order of all the comments you've left.

    In this page, you are also notified anytime someone posts a reply to any of your comments. That way, you don't have to be sitting on a video channel page and reloading it countless times to see if someone replies to you. Just come to your Comments page and if someone does reply to you, you will see the alert message with a link to the video channel page. Extremely useful especially if you've left several comments on different video channels.

• Network
  Here you will also see three different options:
  • friends
    A list of all users you have selected as your friends.

  • Fans
    A list of all users who have selected you as their friend.

  • Like-minded
    A list of the Strmz Blast users who seem to have the closest similar interests to yours. You can use this list for example to add any of them as friends.

• My Settings
  Here you configure how you want Strmz Blast to work for you. From the criteria Strmz Blast follows to build your personal Featured page, to the look and appearance of Strmz Blast itself.

The User Ranking measures your degree of "Strmz Blast-ness" somehow. By voting, submitting video channels, posting and ranking comments, etc. you'll be doing things that may give you a better ranking. Of course, sending 30 comments a day or submitting 10 video channels a day pointlessly is not going to do it for you.

Other things affect your ranking of course, but without getting into great detail, if you use Strmz Blast and are a good sport, your ranking will go up.

Remember however that in Strmz Blast, the influence of a user when it comes to get video channels in other user's Featured pages is determined by those who select him as a friend, not by the user ranking. When you submit a video channel, when you vote, etc. you are treated the same as everyone else, regardless of ranking.

So, what's the point of having a ranking then? Well, 99% of what makes Strmz Blast is the people who use it, and let's just say that we like to know who those people are. Why? Because as time goes by, it will matter.

Strmz Blast also maintains two different rankings: one global and one that resets the first of every month. In fact, somehow we try to give the monthly ranking a bit more exposure than the global ranking.

This means that the very first day of each month, we all are equally ranked :-)

By the way, both rankings are updated only once every 24 hours, usually between 12-1am Pacific time. So if you're interested in seeing whether someone's position in the ranking has gone up or down, you really only need to visit the page once a day.

This might happen especially as long as the number of users isn't very large, and even more at the beginning of the month when the monthly ranking is reset.

Strmz Blast uses an internal "point" system to determine a user's position in the user ranking, where the user doesn't always get rewarded (or penalized) only depending on what she or he does. For example, a user accrues points when someone else assigns that user as their friend.

And since I used the "selected as a friend" example, it may be worth mentioning that a user won't gain nor lose points by being assigned as a friend, then deassigned, then reassigned again, etc. If someone assigns you as a friend, you'll get X points, and if later that person doesn't want you as a friend anymore, you'll lose the same number of points you were given in the first place. And if too many people assign you as their friend, the amount of points you get may decrease every time, depending also on a number of factors.

Most of the ranking rules are made that way, not to claim that it's impossible to game or trick it (it is not impossible), but to avoid making it at least too trivial to do so.

The short answer is no, at least not yet. However, if enough users give it a thumbs down and almost nobody gives it a thumbs up, the video channel will eventually dissapear from everyone's view.

Yes you can. Visit the Tools page where you'll find how to do that.

Yes. Again, visit the Tools page where it explains how to add a widget you your website.

Yes, they do, but they count just as any other friend's votes. No more, no less. You could say that Strmz Blast assumes that your opinion is as valuable to you as any of your friends opinions.

No. If you don't like a video channel or site, why should it still make it to your Featured page?

On the other hand, if you give thumbs down to a video channel that is already in your Featured page, for now it will still remain in your Featured page until new video channels push it down, however very soon this will change so that video channels you voted down do not show up in your Featured page.

Not exactly. Depending on how busy our servers are, Strmz Blast calculates what new video channels should go to your Featured page every once in a while, but never exceeding 60 minutes. Of course, whether it updates your Featured page every 5, 10 or 60 minutes, it always takes into account whatever happened ever since the last update.

Therefore, whether you check your Featured page via web or via RSS, usually you don't need to reload/update your Featured page more than once an hour in order to see whether there are new video channels in your Featured page.

The number of votes and comments on a particular video channel are updated in real time.

Once a video channel makes it to your Featured page, it can only be pushed down by newer video channels, but not removed, regardless of whether you add/remove friends or modify your settings.

For example, say today you add 3 new people as friends. These people's votes cause some video channels to apear in your Featured page. Then, for whatever reason, you decide to remove them as friends. Those video channels previously promoted to your Featured page will stay there until new video channels "push them down". Once a video channel makes it to your Featured page, it'll stay there.

The only case where a video channel can be removed from your Featured page is if you give it thumbs down (read the previous FAQ 19).

It all depends how you've configured your "My friends" page includes... settings.

For example, if you've configured that option as:

• All video channels... Submitted by any of my friends

The only new video channels you'll get in your Featured page will be video channels submitted by your friends.

If you have instead (or also):

• All video channels... Voted by at least one of my friends

Then all it takes is for one of your friends to give a video channel a thumbs up to make it to your Featured page, regardless of who submitted the video channel. It's very straight-forward, really.

Things get a bit more fuzzy if you select Promoted video channels instead of All video channels, because now the promotion algorithm comes into play.

What this algorithm does is to look at how your friends (plus "friends of your friends" if you selected that option) have been voting on a video channel, then, depending how they voted plus a number of other factors, a video channel may or may not be promoted to your Featured page, regardless of whether the video channel was submitted by one of your friends or not.

On this first implementation of our FAQ we tried to cover the basic questions about using Strmz Blast. As we write a more comprehensive FAQ and Help pages, should you have any questions, please contact us.