Oprah, Fix This Site!
*Note the following event took place on Saturday, April 11th.
So...this has been on my soul for awhile but I just didn't have the courage to speak this truth, until this morning. The Oprah/OWN website is ridiculous. This is by no means a slam merely an observation after many years of frustrated surfing on Oprah.com. I would never just for the hell of it criticize Madame Winfrey but I do feel this post needs to be sent out into the 'verse in hopes that it can make this site better...and to relieve these years of built up frustration. The Point of Origin: this morning I got an email from Oprah.com's Thought for Today Newsletter asking me if I had seen Oprah's Original Audition Tape and since I hadn't I was game, I mean what could be a better start to your day than an inspirational video from the Queen of the Hustles, Duchess of Come-Ups, the Empress of Ambition? Well, one that doesn't last a full 30 seconds...yes shade included. When I clicked the video on my phone, it took a minute for the video to come up because that seems to be how the tech folks at Oprah.com roll and once the video actually loaded, the clip was only a 1 minute and 17 seconds long and half that time was used to introduce the other 30 seconds. I mean come on guys, what the what?? But once again this has been the way of the site for as long as its been in operation. Its mainly a bunch of clips followed by lots of adverts for upcoming shows and then a few more clips. Ahem, Ms. O and team, what are we supposed to do with all these clips?? For real, does it make any good sense to have every episode of your most popular shows listed as if we can actually watch them only to be disappointed by the fact that you have to string together multiple clips to get close to an entire episode?! No it doesn't. And I get where this is coming from, Ms. O has built her empire on tv and that's where she wants to keep it. It seems to not matter to the OWN team that all media, including television, is heading toward a heavier online presence which is increasingly becoming the new norm as younger folks with money aren't wanting to spend their duckets on cable when YouTube, Hulu and Netflix are cheaper and more accessible. But, I don't need to tell you that, just look at the new Oprah.com site...what madman's fever dream led us here? The site used to flow tastefully across our screens now it just looks like budgets were cut and someone somewhere somehow made the wrong snip. Its just one long vertical scroll that gives you nothing of OWN's energy but that of a computer engineering student's final project.
OWN family, I don't know what's going on, I just hope that this new site is temporary and that something better and more representative of the company's greatness will be returning soon and with a vengeance because I don't accept that this is your future. Though you may be resisting against uploading more content (really all your content) you will witness in due course that you were fighting an uphill losing battle the whole time. It makes no sense that the OWN YouTube channel only has less than half a million subscribers...that...makes...no...sense! But no duh because the whole channel is CLIPS!
Okay, I'm gonna leave it there because I'm getting upset all over again...someone in the Oprah/OWN camp please get on your job, give Madame the hard news and veer away from the rocks because I guarantee if you made the changes suggested it could be a total game changer for the OWN Network.
If you need me, you know where to reach me :)
So...this has been on my soul for awhile but I just didn't have the courage to speak this truth, until this morning. The Oprah/OWN website is ridiculous. This is by no means a slam merely an observation after many years of frustrated surfing on Oprah.com. I would never just for the hell of it criticize Madame Winfrey but I do feel this post needs to be sent out into the 'verse in hopes that it can make this site better...and to relieve these years of built up frustration. The Point of Origin: this morning I got an email from Oprah.com's Thought for Today Newsletter asking me if I had seen Oprah's Original Audition Tape and since I hadn't I was game, I mean what could be a better start to your day than an inspirational video from the Queen of the Hustles, Duchess of Come-Ups, the Empress of Ambition? Well, one that doesn't last a full 30 seconds...yes shade included. When I clicked the video on my phone, it took a minute for the video to come up because that seems to be how the tech folks at Oprah.com roll and once the video actually loaded, the clip was only a 1 minute and 17 seconds long and half that time was used to introduce the other 30 seconds. I mean come on guys, what the what?? But once again this has been the way of the site for as long as its been in operation. Its mainly a bunch of clips followed by lots of adverts for upcoming shows and then a few more clips. Ahem, Ms. O and team, what are we supposed to do with all these clips?? For real, does it make any good sense to have every episode of your most popular shows listed as if we can actually watch them only to be disappointed by the fact that you have to string together multiple clips to get close to an entire episode?! No it doesn't. And I get where this is coming from, Ms. O has built her empire on tv and that's where she wants to keep it. It seems to not matter to the OWN team that all media, including television, is heading toward a heavier online presence which is increasingly becoming the new norm as younger folks with money aren't wanting to spend their duckets on cable when YouTube, Hulu and Netflix are cheaper and more accessible. But, I don't need to tell you that, just look at the new Oprah.com site...what madman's fever dream led us here? The site used to flow tastefully across our screens now it just looks like budgets were cut and someone somewhere somehow made the wrong snip. Its just one long vertical scroll that gives you nothing of OWN's energy but that of a computer engineering student's final project.
OWN family, I don't know what's going on, I just hope that this new site is temporary and that something better and more representative of the company's greatness will be returning soon and with a vengeance because I don't accept that this is your future. Though you may be resisting against uploading more content (really all your content) you will witness in due course that you were fighting an uphill losing battle the whole time. It makes no sense that the OWN YouTube channel only has less than half a million subscribers...that...makes...no...sense! But no duh because the whole channel is CLIPS!
Okay, I'm gonna leave it there because I'm getting upset all over again...someone in the Oprah/OWN camp please get on your job, give Madame the hard news and veer away from the rocks because I guarantee if you made the changes suggested it could be a total game changer for the OWN Network.
If you need me, you know where to reach me :)
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