Slashdot Mirror


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.'"

10 of 234 comments (clear)

  1. But blogs are already boring enough by grasshoppa · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

    Add video to that. Wow, now I get to see, hear AND read about someone else's boring day. Because you just *know* they'd still write about what you are seeing.

    --
    Mod me down with all of your hatred and your journey towards the dark side will be complete!
  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. Wrong by Quasar1999 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Sorry, but MTV proved to me that shooting a bunch of ugly young kids blabbing about crap in a still frame shot works... Either that or MTV is just a big money laundering operation, cuz after 20 years they're still on the air...

    --

    ---
    Programming is like sex... Make one mistake and support it the rest of your life.
  4. 90% of video blogs will suck by Cro+Magnon · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Just like 90% of the text blogs suck now.

    --
    Slow down, cowboy! It has been 4 hours since you last posted. You must wait another few hours.
  5. 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.

  6. Re:Talking heads suck? by hal2814 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    There's no such thing as "amateur" porn. It's all a scam to get you to pay to watch ugly people.

  7. Re:News flash by Bogtha · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Blogs are just authoritative statements from non-authorities who want their narcisistic rush.

    Nonsense. All a blog is is a website that has a series of articles published in reverse-chronological order, optionally with comments. Nothing in that means they must contain authoratitive statements, and nothing in that means that they must be published by non-authorities.

    Tim Berners-Lee has a blog - would you consider him to be an authority? Blogs that are nothing more than links to other sources are popular - do you consider them to be making authorative statements?

    The word "blog" is almost as general as the word "website". Why are you making such sweeping generalisations?

    --
    Bogtha Bogtha Bogtha
  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. Re:Faith in numbers by Sierpinski · · Score: 5, Insightful

    If 100,000 teens make vidblogs, they'll probably be terrible. Many will publish one, maybe 3 vidcasts and then stop. Yet I still believe that 1 out of 100,000 could make something worth viewing, and once we find it, we'll let others know.

    We don't need blogs for this to happen. This already happens. Some cool, funny, or interesting video on the web has its URL emailed around the globe several times before it dies out. Mirrors/copies of the video spring up everywhere.

    I'm sure you've probably seen the video of the Christmas lights blinking on and off to music. Well that guy apparently was one of the "1 in 100,000", since I saw that video on a beer commerical on network TV last night. He didn't need a blog. He needed a video that was worth telling your friends and family about. Blogs aren't going to change the world, or the internet. Its just a new word for people posting things on their website, which has been going on for decades now.

    Its not the blog that makes something popular, it is its content. If someone produced a really good video and put it on their blog (that I've never heard of before), someone would still have to point me to that blog to see the video, which again is exactly what has been happening for a long time now. You just use the word 'blog' instead of 'site'.