Tag Archive for 'web video production'

Have we reached the online video tipping point?

wsj

We may have just quietly passed the point of no return.

“The Wall Street Journal has moved its video player front and center with a twice-a-day live newscast on WSJ.com.” The New York Times recently reported that the iconic and venerable print publisher The Wall Street Journal is now featuring video prominently on their website. I think I just felt the ground shift a little under my feet.

Remember when the WSJ added color (colour) to its newspaper? That apocalyptic change was debated for months in media circles. This is a couple of orders of magnitude more significant and consequently will get much less attention.

Why did the WSJ do this? Well, as the New York Times explains  “A major reason is commercial.” Uh huh.

More and more people are going online to find what they want – information, news, entertainment, friends, etc. and video is quickly becoming the easiest and most compelling way to consume content online.  Online video advertising, while still small compared to TV advertising is growing quickly. The money will follow the crowd.

Many things could have signaled the transition from the ‘text’ web to the ‘next web’ such as rich media penetration rates, the number of  YouTube videos viewed per month or the percentage of companies using video on their websites. I think the symbolism of the worlds most prominent print publication prominently featuring video on its website is as good a signal as any to suggest that online video has finally  ‘arrived.’

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Web Video Production will have a profound effect on how businesses evolve

Computer Monitor

We tend to take most things in life on face value. The earth is round, the universe is expanding, the internet is slow, but improving. This slow progression and acceptance of our ‘realities’ also tends to stop us from seeing what’s just around the corner. An example:

Imagine if television in the 1950’s evolved the same way that the internet has.  What if TV in its infancy was little more than radio with text – much like the early stages of the web.  What if television started with many, many channels but they all offered slow text, perhaps a few graphics. Over time, maybe ten years or more the television broadcast networks evolved to allow some blinking graphics, then motion graphics via flash files that allowed you to see moving images accompanied with text. How powerful a medium would TV have been up to that point. Would it have consumed our lives the way it has? Would it become the focal point of our entertainment, our advertising, our news consumption?

With the Internet today we are close (but not quite there) to where television started over fifty years ago.  Video is widely viewable today online around the world but the experience varies considerably. That will change over the next few years as good or great quality video will be delivered to any screen you want it on (tv, computer, mobile devise). When that happens this will have a profound effect on how business communicate and evolve. Like the frog in the slowly warming pot of water, many businesses won’t even notice the change.

What makes the impact that much more significant is that all of the televisions are connected, everyone is creating their own television shows and you can watch what you want, wherever and whenever you want. Context is everything and the companies that win in this game will be the companies that can produce contextually relevant video products for their audiences. Content that has real value (not commercials), content that people want to share and content that changes how people see and do things.

No, text isn’t going away (in spite of the recent pain in the print industry) in our lifetime but we are entering a time where new visual languages, graphic interfaces and video content will change how businesses communicate.

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