Rhetorical Situation and Web-tool Overview
The web-tool “Masher.com” is a video presentation site orientated towards those who wish to create simple slideshow styled videos with a relatively easily to used tool. In use, it works most similarly to the program Windows Movie Maker, but has several constraints and affordances that distinguish it from other movie-making programs. The audience, in addition to those who are looking for a free online movie-maker, is that of Facebook users. The site encourages one to log in and create an account by utilizing their Facebook profile, as well as to share your creations via Facebook, Twitter, or Myspace.
Design Choices and Operation
Masher’s design and operation currently focuses on the editing and production of your “mash,” with little in the realm of visually enticing or distracting elements. In regards to spatial design, much of the page is occupied by the actual masher tool, and all other space is taken up by bottom and/or sidebar ads, in addition to grey space. When you first navigate to the site, you are presented with a Log-in page with the options to create an account, log-in or log-in via your Facebook account. This page is visually interesting and emotionally appealing as it provides a feeling that the site will be useful and fun. The page is relatively well balanced as the imagery is faded into the background and the log-in options are presented in the middle.
Once logged-in, the site immediately gives you the work center for creating mashes. Located in the top right is a navigation menu that hold only five selections; Home, Studio, Gallery, My Mashes and My Account. The Home menu brings you back to a page nearly identical to the log-in page that presents two options; you may either select “Studio”, or “My Mashes”, both of which will return you to their respective pages.
It is worthy to note that at this time, the website is lacking a true central page, or at least one that is expected of a professionally built site. This has the potential to cause the sites users to question its credibility and legitimacy, which may be costing this web-tool visits, and the loss of users.
The Gallery option takes you to page where you can navigate through and view other users’ mashes. The three categories that the mashes are presented in on this page are “Featured Mashes”, “Latest Mashes” and “Most Popular.” One interesting thing to notice on this page is that when you select the “Most Popular” tab, videos listed as having relatively low views or “no views” appear in the listings. This seems to be due to the fact that the videos in these lists are not organized by any means that I could discern, and unfortunately, are also not searchable by topic or content tags.
The Studio option takes the user to the focus of the site, the editing tool. This page is simple and is relatively self-explanatory, however, a link to an instructional video titled, “watch the demo,” is located at the top left of the page if you need help; be forewarned though, as the video is over seven minutes long and is a “step by step tutorial,” rather than a quick help video. In order to create your “mash,” you will first choose one of four themes and click “Next Step” in the bottom right. Next you will select your media from either your computer files or your Facebook profile. Unfortunately, the site limits you to only choosing images and does not allow you to upload videos. Once you have chosen your photos, you will drag them to the timeline in the order you want them to be. Once you finish, you can proceed to the next step, and choose an audio track for your mash. You are not allowed to choose an mp3 file or any iTunes media for your mash, but royalty free music you have saved to your PC will upload just fine. There is a feature on this page where you are supposed to be able to select from a library of music from Masher.com, but there is no content and this part of the tool is effectively useless. Next you can place text into your mash as titles, but not on top of or within your images. The final step allows you to name, publish, and save your new mash to the site as well as your PC and either Twitter, Facebook, or Myspace.
Affordances and Constraints
The affordances provided through Masher.com are good, but are slightly outweighed by its number of constraints. To start, Masher is exceptionally easy to connect with a Facebook profile and utilized previously uploaded images to create content. It is also social media friendly as it provides easy access to not only upload your mashes to Facebook, but twitter and Myspace as well. Perhaps its largest affordance however, is that it allows the user to create content very quickly and easily in under ten minutes in a guided process.
The constraints of this tool are really what may break the deal for its users. At first glance the site appears nice and convenient, but once you begin to use it for a short period of time, it begins to reveal that it is in many ways is incomplete. Sections of the tool, such as the aforementioned video and audio sections, are constrained by lack of content or abilities. For example, not being able to upload videos for your mash reduces what might have been intended to be a video presentation into a music-accompanied slide show, and the lack of a library of music limits and can even complicate the creation of your mash.
Conclusion
Overall, this web-tool is good in concept and has several perks attached to it in the sense that it offers compatibility with three major social media sites, with the primary one being Facebook, as well as its ease of use by anyone with an internet connection. Unfortunately, it is very apparent through my interrogation of this web-tool, that it has been left incomplete. The designers of this site were on the right track with the concept but its execution has been poor and their creation is suffering because of it. Ultimately, there is no real advantage of using this site over a program such as Windows Movie Maker, which typically comes as part of the Microsoft office suite, and is therefore provided with many PC’s at purchase. It is unfortunate that this tool has been left this way as I see it as having the potential to become very useful if it were completed and given a chance to become known among social media users.
The Drake 94 