Hvae a look at 12 seconds of a popular game and see all the messages.

Thanks you for a post that made me think. No really, I had to think

Is youtube/stumble/digg going to experience the same popularity when the novelty dies off. No. Because they are internet video “browsing” stations. But we can’t make the statement that video itself won’t be successful – it will just switch to a more “choose what you are interested in” format. I don’t know what that format is: Seesmic? Vlogging/videocasts? Live Streaming? Who knows, but I do feel confident in saying video is still the most effective way to get your message across in many cases.

Tyler Willis
Disgruntled Filmmaker Technologist

ps – love the blog. I’m not attacking anyone, I realize this is 2 years old. I just wanted to express that I don’t think anyone’s personal distaste for media spans the culture.

I can’t focus on podcasts if I’m writing. Granted, some people can. I’m just not one who can listen and write at the same time unless I’m literally transcribing what I’m hearing in which case my focus is still on what I’m hearing. But if I’m writing about one thing and listening to another thing, my writing would suffer and I wouldn’t firmly grasp what was being spoken on the podcast. That’s where the attention divide is for me. It’s just been a little hard to conquer.

Note, by the way, that this was written two years ago. I’ve matured a bit (I actually participated in numerous podcasts last year), but I still find it hard to really attend to podcasts as much as I’d like. I’m still slowly embracing it, but it’s been a long process, and it certainly doesn’t help that I work from home (since I’m rarely driving far at least in NYC and when I do travel, it’s music for now). I just have to find the right podcast, I guess.

Podcasts are designed for transportation: they were made to put on your iPod and walk anywhere you want with them. Podcasts can be consumed while performing other tasks that are primarily visual or related to touch, such as walking, driving, or writing. It’s significantly more difficult to read while doing any of those. The argument for ease of repetition or selecting start/stop points for the podcast is overcome by many devices, portable or desktop, whose GUIs allow users to easily move around on podcasts–it is very similar to having to scan a page for where you left off.

I think you underestimate the flexibility of podcasts. I’m not arguing podcasts are usually better than text; I do think that podcasts have benefits that are worth defending.

Now, I don’t want to make it sound like giving my undivided attention to something is a problem. I do it on a regular basis.

But when I’m online in the text-world, I float in a state of multi-tasking that I appreciate. I can be writing or reading a blog post and easily interrupt it for a quick chat, or even, as I’ve done sometimes, write and chat in parallel. Or read and write. Or wander off and do something else, and come back to it later.

None of that with audio and video. Once you start watching/listening, you’re stuck there, and you have to stop it if you want to wander off.

It is a different mode from my normal online mode.

Lengthy videos are worse. I have so many choices but I have to narrow them down. And unlike reading something (skimming and getting an idea of what to expect), you can’t do so with video. You often hear a lot of people say after watching something they just don’t like, “please give me my five minutes back.”