Andy Abramson, VoIP expert and cohost of KenRadio has a post about the rise of video bloggers at CES. It discusses how we’re going to treat journalists backed by a large media entity versus how we’re going to treat your average clown roaming the floor at CES with a DV camera. And that video bloggers are going to receive much more credibility because of their numbers and their ability to publish quickly at events like CES.
I agree with that basic assumption, but in the examples that he gave with The Technology Evangelist, I throw out the comment about finding the signal throughout the noise.
Twice, the Technology Evangelist made videos requesting people to send in videos asking what they’d like to see the Technology Evangelist cover at CES. Here and Here. Each was about two minutes long and they added no “video” value. Meaning why am I watching a video of this rather than just reading it. For two minutes I heard him talk about being at CES, that it was cold, and that you should send him requests. That’s it. He could have accomplished that same feat by typing in a single line of text with a link that said, “Send me a video request of what you’d like to see at CES.” Or he could have produced a two minute video of some value and at the end say, “Send me a video request of what you’d like to see at CES.”
I bring up this comment not to trash the Technology Evangelist but rather to explain an inherent problem with video. It’s not easily scannable. And because of that, most of us rely on each other to recommend good video than necessarily trolling it for ourselves like we might scan the headlines of a text based website or a newspaper.
If you’re going to go with “video” as your medium you have to tell a story with pictures. And if that’s going to just be a talking head, then that talking head better be pretty compelling. My advice to all video bloggers is you need to spend some time editing and producing that two minutes of video if you want me to sit and watch.
The problem is with that pointless two minutes of “I’m at CES and send me a video request” the Technology Evangelist has lost me as a viewer. At the time of producing it I’m sure he thought, “Oh, we need to put up some video and we want some people to send it content so let’s make a video of that.” I’m sure he didn’t think anything of it, and that it was an innocuous move. The problem is it was actually dangerous move. When you create crappy boring video you lose people for your future videos. Poor video means a lost audience for future good videos.
I am willing to watch another one of his videos, but I’m not going to do it on my own nor am I going to sign up for his RSS feed. Someone I trust, like Andy Abramson, is going to recommend a video for me. I’m not going to troll for it on my own. Until then, I know that CNET produces tons of videos at the conference and they spend the effort editing them. I’ll probably end up watching those until someone recommends something else for me to watch.
