I did a video rant about this a couple of weeks ago. I've been thinking about different layouts and ways of presenting things since then.
Great thoughts, Ron - particularly what you note how we're comfortable with line-by-line communication in a vertical format, but how it's limited the success of the traditional videoblog - and how daunting it is for a viewer to face a bunch of videos in a line down the page. I've seen this problem when watching people go to my videoblog. It's not just a problem for the viewer, it's a problem for the producer. Reading your post made me realise how much I've forced myself to like the blog format because that's what everyone uses - even though initially I thought it sucked. But when we started out, it was the easiest way to do publishing and podcasting. Now I've totally fallen out of love with the blog format. So much so that I can't seem to drum up the motivation to put any energy into making videos until I can feel good about how I publish them. I've been thinking about the successful shows you mentioned - FU, Ninja, Rocketboom. Wreck & Salvage and LoFi St Louis have good new designs, too - which encourage people to browse more freely and don't force the reader to deal with this heirarchy of freshness/relevance. For me, I think there may be an element of needing more interlinked networking between producers - to allow people to browse outside of your own videos. Jesus, that sounds like a web-ring. But isn't that the best thing about YouTube? That you can choose to see more videos by the same person or jump to something related but made by someone totally different? I don't know. I'm stuck. But it's good to read your thoughts on it. Rupert http://twittervlog.tv On 10-Dec-08, at 10:05 AM, Ron Watson wrote: Great topic, Heath! I've been doing online video since 1998, and I was very excited with the explosion of digital video in 2005. It was awesome! I dabbled with wordpress and the blog format for a while, but it was obvious to me rather quickly that the long vertical videoblog (and blog, for that matter) was a dead end in terms of viability. It's daunting to scroll down a page and see an hour of video. It makes the small, short flicks and turns them into a day long endeavor. I think the traditional blog format is great for RSS feeds and for archival purposes, but as far as presentation of content, it's not good for holding people's attention. If you're content is very special or totally rock solid, you can hold an audience, but you are fighting against a faulty design. There are 2 ways in which the traditional blog layout fails for video blogging. Story telling and Community. --- Story Telling --- I took a critical look at a person from this list's new project, and that's what I found to be the critical fault in the presentation of content. He had all this great content, a really sweet, honest and appealing vibe, beautiful theming, but it all went out the window when I scrolled down the page and saw 15 5 minute videos all presented as a running commentary - essentially a very long monologue. I have no doubt that the content was personally appealing (although I couldn't watch it because of bandwidth constraints - :-( ) but when I saw that scrolling list, it just seemed like a Herculean task to go through it. I really was intrigued by the vibe set up by the site and my personal belief system, but when I saw the layout of the content, I was turned off. I didn't want to watch that much on one topic. When you post 30 things on one page, it devalues all of them. It triggers the idea of a lack of quality - like "this thing couldn't stand on it's own so he put 30 on one page." I suggested that he set up in a landscape format (as opposed to portrait, or blog) which would embrace his theme, keep relevant content on the page at all times, be an efficient use of space and would let each video (or 2) be it's own story. I could actually see myself watching all 15 videos with this kind of layout if the content was good with some clever storytelling. Leave me with a cliffhanger, or give me a text based teaser to draw me into the next video. --- Community --- Also, this kind of a layout creates a dialogue. I watch it then I talk about it. It's the give and take, the interaction with the viewer that we're all looking for. Let me watch a video and digest it. Then I'll comment on it. The traditional blog format reminds me of online tit for tat email communication that I find becomes 2 dueling monologues. When you create a series of communication, or a series of argument, there is a critical loss of context. We forget what we were talking about. The discussion becomes about the minutia or the meta, and the greater understanding or message is lost. It quite literally is the presentation of parts - the parts are greater than the whole. I don't think it works well for online communication, and I don't think it works well for communicating with multimedia content. It isolates the viewer, it isolates the content creator, and it isolates the content itself. It looks like it's all connected, but in reality it's just a list. It's like a quoted, line by line email argument as opposed to a well thought out and crafted piece of prose. JMHO... --- Tunnel Vision --- I'm in the process of creating a large community website based on dog sports. It's very ambitious, and I'm going to be facing competitors that have very deep pockets. It's pretty intimidating, to tell the truth. I'm working very hard to create a really nice looking site that has boatloads of functionality. One of the things that I've struggled with is the organizational heirarchy of the site - both in terms of navigation and content presentation. It's very hard. My greatest goal is to bring these heretofore disparate communities, 6 of them with very different mindsets but one common passion of working with dogs, together. I took that single mindedness and tried to force my needs, my comfort zone and my goals on them, the enduser. It would have failed. I wanted a simple menu structure that presented content and access to content from each community on each page. I wound up with a convoluted and hard to follow menu structure, kind of like what is currently on http://k9disc.com . It just wasn't compelling, and the goal of elegance and inclusiveness trumped the usability of the site. If I would have stuck with that model, my deep pocketed competitors would smoke me, of that, I'm sure. But stepping back and reevaluating my approach prompted me to make some changes that were a bit uncomfortable for me personally, and for my conceptualization of the project, but I got through it and think that I have a much better shot at developing a vibrant and engaged community as a result. I think that the videoblogging community, of the non-youtube sort, have gotten stuck in line by line communication. That's how so many of us communicate. It's also how the tools we use function. Look at this list. Look at twitter. Look at RSS. Look at the video blog. They're all the same. Not everybody likes the simplicity of twitter. Not everybody likes linear presentation of content. It's what so many of us know and understand, so it becomes what we do and how we do it. Thinking about it, I think this has been a major factor in the limited success of traditional videoblogging. Youtube won on presentation and community, and the presentation and I believe the community developed out of the landscape layout - relevant content on every screenshot, and the ability of every video to stand on it's own. Ask a Ninja? Epic Fu? Rocketboom? Blip? All of them landscape (esque) with one video per page. Storytelling. I know they're shows and not really videoblogs, but they're successful and well watched. Sure they have compelling content, but I think it has something to do with presentation as well. peace, Ron Watson http://k9disc.blip.tv http://k9disc.com http://discdogradio.com http://pawsitivevybe.com On Dec 10, 2008, at 10:56 AM, Heath wrote: > I have been doing a lot of thinking as I come close to my 3 year mark > of vlogging. From the outset of vlogging almost everyone settled on > the blog format for their site. And I think at that time it worked. > > However, now.....I am not so sure. I mean every time you make a > video and post, that video moves down the list and soon it's off your > homepage in some cases, never to be seen again. Now for some, maybe > that is no big deal, but.....I think some of us all make a few videos > that we are especially proud of, and in the current blog/vlog format, > there is no easy way (I know we can sticky but if you sticky more > than a couple no one will ever see your new content on your site) to > show off those posts. > > It seems to me that there is a huge lack in the number of themes that > take advatage of vlogging. I mean with the explosion of online > video, you would think we would have more, but I only know of a small > handfull and most of those you have to pay for. > > I am just curious as to what you all think? I just don't know....I > mean part of me likes the blog/vlog format as it is, but I find > myself longing for a different way to show off my video's moreso the > ones that I want to showcase or ones that I am fond of...I mean I > could revlog but.... > > So what do you all like and dislike about the current vlog format? > What would you like to see? Just curious... > > Heath > http://heathparks.com > > > [Non-text portions of this message have been removed] [Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
