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Why Video Blogs Will Suck

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the you-mean-besides-the-obvious dept.

Ohreally_factor writes "Web Usability Guru Jakob Nielson has recently written a piece for his Alertbox Blog that does not bode well for video bloggers: Static, talking heads are even more boring on the internet than they are on TV. Nielson backs up his ideas with data from a study done on eyetracking while watching web video. One of Nielson's caveats: 'keep distracting elements out of the frame of your shots. If there's a road sign in the video, for example, users will try to read it and will thus miss some of the main content.'"

14 of 234 comments (clear)

  1. Talking heads suck? by Black+Parrot · · Score: 3, Funny

    What did you expect from a webcam?

    --
    Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
    1. Re:Talking heads suck? by SatanicPuppy · · Score: 4, Funny

      Pssh. I expect what I'm going to see...Tons of amatuer iPod porn.

      --
      ad logicam Claiming a proposition is false because it was presented as the conclusion of a fallacious argument.
  2. Of course they will suck by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny
    In fact, everything on the Internet pretty much sucks. That doesn't keep it from growing at about 8000% per year.

    On the bright side of course we can expect some pretty creative and funny videos being passed about. I can't wait until the product-placement folks start getting involved. This is gonna rock.

  3. Why Video Blogs Really Suck by Nom+du+Keyboard · · Score: 4, Funny

    Because Catherine Zeta Jones isn't making them.

    --
    "It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
  4. A picture is worth 1000 words. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    So a video blog at 15fps is worth 900,000 words a minute.

  5. Distracting elements by Tackhead · · Score: 4, Funny
    > Static, talking heads are even more boring on the internet than they are on TV. Nielson backs up his ideas with data from a study done on eyetracking while watching web video. One of Nielson's caveats: 'keep distracting elements out of the frame of your shots. If there's a road sign in the video, for example, users will try to read it and will thus miss some of the main content.'"

    ...and that goes double for a pair of tits. Unless, of course, the tits are the content. There's such a thing as taking this approach too far -- our studies found that in contrast to heads, static talking tits were even more distracting than bouncing (but otherwise silent) ones.

  6. Re:Faith in numbers by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Funny

    No doubt, a million monkeys working at a million keyboards will eventually produce Shakespear; sorting through those 999,999 other monkey's work will be painful though.

    The truth is that what will be the biggest problems for video content from the web are Ugly people (its a cruel fact but most of us are not TV pretty), and poor production values. Let's face it, people are shallow and when they see someone with a bad comb-over, on a set that looks like waynes world, through a crappy web-camera they will discount anything that he has to say; when they see Jesica Alba, on a fancy set, through a digitally enhanced HD signal they will think she is super smart.

    Basically what I am saying could be summed up in a piece of advice I was given upon entering the office world (which I have found to be true) "If you want people to think that you're smart stay in shape, get your teeth fixed, dress nicely, get a good haircut and stay well groomed."

  7. Re:But blogs are already boring enough by vertinox · · Score: 3, Funny

    Seriously, I don't get what the rage is about blogs. Why would I? Why would someone else's boring day suddenly be interesting because they wrote about it.

    Because in the blogs I read that someone else is a girl, has larger tits than you, and they post pictures of them...

    --
    "I am the king of the Romans, and am superior to rules of grammar!"
    -Sigismund, Holy Roman Emperor (1368-1437)
  8. oh why thank you internet by SydBarrett · · Score: 5, Funny

    Oh boy, another form of media to not give a shit about.

    No wait, it's just home movies with meta tags wow.

  9. Re:News flash by Billosaur · · Score: 5, Funny

    I can see the old joke resurrected now: "He has a face made for HTML".

    --
    GetOuttaMySpace - The Anti-Social Network
  10. What's this about The Talking Heads? by Lxy · · Score: 2, Funny

    Static, talking heads are even more boring on the internet than they are on TV

    On the contrary. I rather think that if The Talking Heads had a video blog it would be quite interesting.

    --

    There is no reasonable defense against an idiot with an agenda
    :wq
  11. Re:90% of video blogs will suck by Peldor · · Score: 2, Funny

    Of course there's the +/-10% margin of error.

  12. 2d fighters by I_heart_chunli · · Score: 2, Funny

    video blogs will at least give no lifers like me the ability to post personal match videos from various 2d street fighter games. Who wouldn't wanna see that?

  13. Re:Video blogs? by Billosaur · · Score: 2, Funny
    That phenomenom exists merely as the continued foreshadowing of stupidification of verbalized communication caused by the fact that human beings (and alternate intelligent, rights-bearing creatures) would front their preferences towards behaving as uni-syllable-ized moving corpses as opposed to learning pronunciation and extremely long, multisyllable words that other people only use because they think it makes them seem intelligent.

    Thts nt wh i mnt at ll.

    --
    GetOuttaMySpace - The Anti-Social Network