TEDxSoMa

Evan Solomon, Justin.tv

From the program: Evan is the Vice President of Marketing at Justin.tv. He is responsible for setting the company’s communication strategy, corporate branding and public relations. Before joining Justin.tv, Evan was a Senior Associate at SutherlandGold, a boutique PR firm focused on consumer technology startups. At SutherlandGold he managed communications Xobni, Scribd and other venture-funded startups. Evan attended the Stern Undergraduate School of Business at New York University.

Media is made up of two parts: content + response. It’s easy to think of those two things as separate, but Justin.tv feels they go hand-in-hand. He shows an interactive wall that multiple people can touch-interact with.

On Justin.tv, chat drives usage. The more days you spend on the site in a week, the more messages you type on a given day. Those engaged users wag the dog. Even though they’re only about 2% of the site, they make up around 17% of chat volume — roughly the same as the first 20%. From his point of view, that means that his interaction with the 2% can have a really big impact on the whole site.

The users that interact define your product. Interactivity must be embedded, and not just with a ‘tweet me’ button. Design shouldn’t be painted on, and neither should interactivity. If you want your ideas to spread beyond you, you need to think about how others are going to share it with each other.