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Why Video Blogs Will Suck
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.'"
Blogs are just authoritative statements from non-authorities who want their narcisistic rush. I find the majority of them to be boring to begin with, why would video be any different?
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
Good points.
I've been speaking with numerous freedom writers about creating a daily podcast (and possibly a weekly vidcast even). I've come up with a simple way to overcome the "is this podcast download-worthy?" question -- just post transcripts. I've been working on a way to make my blogs both readable AND speakable so that people who don't have the desire to read them can also listen to them. One can take a 200 word blog post and make it a decent 10 minute OpEd podcast that extends on the ideas in the blog.
I'm looking forward to the first vidcasts. Knowing what the bottom looks like will give me a good view of what the possibilities are.
You seem to confuse two distinct types of blogs here - or maybe you're not aware of the distinction at all, so let me recap that:
The first kind of blog is the one you talk about and that you find boring - personal blogs detailing personal experiences, kind of like a public diary. The second kind is blogs dedicated to certain subjects etc.; these are more akin to professional journalistic media such as newspapers etc.
The "rage" about blogs is mostly about the second kind; and FWIW, the second kind are the only ones that are meant to attract readers not otherwise acquainted with the writer, too.
Nobody expects you to find the personal diary of Joe Average to be interesting; but then, the *purpose* of blogs of the first kind is not to attract you (or others), anyway, but rather to allow the writer to keep their own circle of friends informed about the going-ons in their life. Think of it as some kind of multicast communication - instead of telling the same stories over and over again to everyone who asks "how was your day?" (be it in an email, IM, on the phone, in person, or whatever), Joe Average just writes these things down in a central place *once* for everyone to read.
There's advantages for the reader, too: they typically will be able to read the blogs of many of their friends in an aggregate fashion, by means of an RSS aggregator or on a social networking site such as MySpace or Livejournal or so; and what's more, they can also decide when to catch up, and - when they do catch up - what to read in depth, what to gloss over, and what to skip completely.
So, yes, most blogs of the first kind *are* boring, but complaining about that just shows that you misunderstood their purpose: they're not *meant* to be interesting or to attract readers. That's the second kind you're thinking of there.
As for video blogs, those don't seem to make much sense to me with either kind - it seems that it's more of a combination of buzzwords, a marketing ploy or PR gag without any real value. Not that there aren't situations where video feeds could be interesting, of course, but I do predict that text-based blogs will remain in the majority for now - and probably for quite a long time, too, simply because they distract the reader/viewer less and do not force them to focus their attention as much as video does.
quidquid latine dictum sit altum videtur.
Why would someone else's boring day suddenly be interesting because they wrote about it.
I dunno. Why would you assume that all blogs are just boring people writing about their boring days?
In fact, why would you read, hear, or watch ANY media of any kind? It's just people talking about or doing stuff. Boring.
Great, so your average college student, who's been told his or her whole life that THEY are a beautiful and unique snowflake, that protesting outside Starbucks BEFORE they go inside makes them virtuous, that everyone is special, that every child can learn, and that mommy and daddy can't wait to hear their next opinion, now are going to be out video blogging, spewing content into the ether in hopes that its picked up by someone. College girls already do this, but at least they show their hooters. Not while they're protesting WTO or advocating Fair Trade hemp-based guatemalan thongs though. College guys already do this, but its typically things like the video of the guy shooting the fireworks from his butt. How will this be any different, because its related to blogging and somehow related to the iPod, then its cool?
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
Agreed on content == good. Especially if hot girls are involved ;)
But, videos are going to be a problem in terms of search engines. Unless we get tagging properly implemented at the same time, vidcasts will be essentially lost.
And what about linking? Will vidcasts refer to other vidcasts? What happens then? Will search engines be able to find out how many vidcasts talk about the one, very cool vidcast? Probably not.
So, why not, I wonder? Is it because we can't embed links in videos? Nope. But, it would have been a lot easier, if we'd all settled on a useful, extensible, open web video standard years ago, instead of allowing people like Real and MS to fight over who would dominate. As usual, they're greedy, society suffers.
...and what I expected to see in your comment: he didn't compare video feeds on the internet to TV, but still maintained that the internet's talking heads were different drom TV talking heads just because it was the internet.
.edu email address I'd think you were a 14 year old.
Perhaps it's true, but we really can't know unless it's tested.
The distractions he mentions on a "vlog" distract me on CNN, particularly when Mr. Head is in a hurricane and stuff is flying past him. The flying debris is far more interesting than the anchor (unless said anchor is an attractive woman).
What is your science called? Nobody says "I'm a space scientist," they say "astrophysicist" (or whatever else their specialty is). Calling youself a "vision scientest" puts up red flags for me, and makes me wonder if you're really credible or if you're an 18 year old undergrad internet wanker.
If you really were a "vision scientest" you would know that having a huge single paragraph is incredibly hard to read. If not for your
Especially when you said "trust me." I don't know you from Adam, why should I trust you?
(MRC="clamped", Jed)
...and what about Peter Jackson? With "only" cult splatters like Bad Taste, Meet the Feebles et al behind him (and the pun that was Forgotten Silver), he was chosen(?) to direct LOTR.
:) LOTR is full of "bad taste" camera angles and movements too - love his style.
I see Peter Jackson as the new Lucas - Indie star starts with nothing, gets noticed, build advanced film studio, makes big movies.
BTW, anyone noticed the "ketchup splurt" sound in LOTR2 when the orc loses its head (when the two hobbits are captured)? Definite Jackson meta-homage by the sound crew