Slashdot Mirror
Executive Says Facebook Will Be All Video, No Text In 5 Years (mashable.com)
Kellen Beck, writing for Mashable: Video must be doing well on Facebook, because an executive at the company just predicted that's all Facebook will be in five years. Nicola Mendelsohn, Facebook's vice president of European, Middle Eastern and African operations, said at a conference Tuesday that in five years, Facebook "will be probably all video," Quartz reported. Mendelsohn added that video is "the best way to tell stories in this world" and "helps us to digest much more information." Mendelsohn is predicting the obsolescence of the written word, at least on Facebook, according to Quartz. That sounds far-fetched, but consider the way Facebook is decreasing an emphasis on text and diving headfirst into video with numerous recent updates and features.
Not only that, I can skip over the uninteresting stuff or things I already am aware of. Plus I can jump back a paragraph if I zoned out while reading or was distracted by a hottie walking by.
Plus when creating a message, I can edit it, change the order, or delete bits that are redundant or dangle.
And I can type in my message in the nude. While I'm not bothered by it, others might be :)
[John]
Shit better not happen!
Text ads are all but worthless at this point, users are quickly becoming jaded by still image advertising, but an all-video platform provides more opportunities to present video ads which seem to be the latest rage. My cynical side firmly believes that's why Facebook has placed more emphasis on video content lately, and introduced features like autoplaying videos in the news feed.
And yes, it's far-fetched to think that FB will be all-video at any point before they fade completely into irrelevancy. After all, it seems like virtually everything on my news feed at this point is links to clickbait websites, sappy inspirational quotes superimposed over stock photos, and "comment below then put this as your status" copypasta.
There are also countless situations where it is more appropriate to say nothing at all instead of writing a short text comment, but that hasn't seemed to stop most people who are constantly on Facebook or any form of social media for that matter.
Furthermore, phone calls are closer to video than text. We had audio phone conversations before we had instant text communication in everyone's hands, and text communication caught on like wildfire as an easier, less intrusive thing to do.
I think the asynchronous nature of text is a bigger contributing factor to it's success than how unobtrusive it is. (reposted because I wasn't logged in the first time)
Plus, it's way easier to skip text than spoken word to find the information you're looking for.
More often than not, when you're finally digging for helpful information (e.g. for a setup process or to understand a new feature in a program you're using), you can skip to about the middle of the explanation, because of course it has to cover every step, even those that you had no problem with. It's kinda hard to do that with someone talking instead of simply providing the text. Skimming text for the key words you're looking for is easy.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
If you recall F541 by ray bradbury you may recall the sad social life of the fireman's wife who lived in a room with four video walls and interacted with her facebook "freinds" / soap operas. Text was not used, indeed it was burned.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.