podcasting - Otherwise Occupied

gregh 2006-09-19 06:09 Blogging podcasting videoblogging

Chris left a comment on my earlier ~~rant~~take on videoblogging. I'm not sure if they suggestion was that they're just the early adopters of what is sure to be the next wave of Internet communications, and I'm clearly just too dense to get that, or if they're just early adopters and it could go either way. I'll side with the latter, though I think it's unlikely to go either way. I think all but those who can continually put together regular, entertaining, meaningful video content will go away, and those that can will be sucked into the mainstream in one way or another.

That said, I agree that they're early adopters, and I think they're far too overly enamored with the technology. It's one tool for communicating information. Everyone's looking for new stuff to syndicate, and video seems to be what's cool now. In 1996, I was writing Java applets, claiming them to be the future of the web. Anyone remember BackWeb or PointCast or Marimba? How many people are using object databases today (and how many aren't simply stuck on those because of what their developers forced them into years ago?) Still have a Ricochet transceiver hanging around? I'll just say that I think blog-like videos are a passing fancy, and that today's early adopters are just too enamored with feeling they're on the cutting edge. Sort of like those who feel they were first to the ideas of blogs. Randy's planfile anyone?

It's important to remember Scoble's background doing interviews and capturing shots of new products at Microsoft. There are few better ways to capture such things than video. But for a large amount of the material out there, it's simply not the best way to communicate. Use video where it's important, but don't fall into the trap of believing that everything must be on video, or that it's ideal or even a good choice for most things.

It can be readily analogized to database-based content management systems. When people first started crafting them, they (and this includes me) shoved all of their data into the database. This was great. We could manage updates of the material, track who made changes, and always be sure the user got the most up-to-date data.

A humorous caveat: most content never changed.

Another: databases are more difficult to scale than web servers and filesystems.

Databases are a great tool for storing and tracking data, but they're not a great tool for generically serving data. As a result, they should be used for serving data only when that data would otherwise be too difficult to present statically, or when the work involved to make it static would be too great. (Drupal, which powers this site, does pull content from the database; however, it also caches data as it pulls it from the database the first time.)

Video is the same sort of deal. Great for certain things, like capturing a combination of audio and action. Not so great for other things, like scanning quickly.

Or searching!

Using audio and video for too much suggests to me that the content simply isn't that important. Why? Because no one will be able to find it. At least not anytime soon. I have no way to look at a video's title or description and quickly figure out if something there is of value. I can't search through it to see if a specific term of art (I am such a law student!) that I'm interested in was used. I either have to slog through the whole thing or randomly pick slices to see if what I'm looking for is there.

Short videos like Scoble's meat counter and breakfast (if those exhibits required video at all) can be very useful. But my concern is this idea that everyone needs to be on the next, new thing. That text is so 2005. That if you're still writing, rather than podcasting or videoblogging, you just don't get it.

Oh, I get it, all right.