Video Day On AVC

I am going to try something new. The only thing that will be on this blog today is video. If a picture is worth a thousand words, maybe video is worth 10x that. We’ll see.

#VC & Technology

Comments (Archived):

  1. vruz

    great interviews…. you saw it first in avc.blogs.com :-)but isn’t this video thing what a tumblelog is supposed to do ?

    1. Guest

      we viewed them yesterday on techticker – the streaming crashed – never did see the full length. So yes vruz, we *fully* saw them here first :)fred, can you followup with view count in the next few weeks?

    2. fredwilson

      Yup. In fact I got two of the videos from tumblr

  2. Nick

    Not such a huge fan, I’ve got to say. Google Reader has too many unreads for me to read each article in great detail, and my reading speed is greater than the speed at which I am able to read. My 2ยข

    1. fredwilson

      I agree that video is not an efficient way to communicate information. But its fun every once in a whileFred

  3. gregory

    cool, unless one is on dialup in south india (or a lot of other places, i am sure) you tube doesn’t function

    1. vruz

      well it’s really hard to support the entire world, I believe.besides, if the vast majority is able to access the content, should they be limited to a minimum (*VERY* minimum) common denominator ?annotating videos with text, subtitling and making the text available as htmlwould be the ideal, but that may be too much to ask from a one-man showdon’t you think ?are there any video startups doing something like that for collaborativevideo annotation ?that could be one possible solution

  4. Jamie

    Video is cool, but it’s efficacy is limited. It takes too much time to watch and listen to a video. I can read an article in probably a quarter of the time it takes for me to stream it, and I get more out of reading since I am more of a visual learner then an auditory one. Podcasting is nice for very specific topics, but for general news items? I’d rather read the New York Times on the 2 train. If I had to podcast (or worse, video stream) general news items it would take me all day.An expertly written article backed up with a well taken photograph, if executed properly can probably grab my imagination more then a video can anyway, since a picture gives a frame of reference and your minds eye fills in the blanks. Video doesn’t have that luxury – I’m not a psychologist, but I tend to imagine less about the surroundings when I watch TV or video then I do when reading.That said, I do watch a lot of internet video, but only for very specific things: Comedy, Music, and two TV shows I have managed to get myself addicted to (Lost and Battlestar). Of course, these aren’t rules just what I find myself doing most of the time.

    1. fredwilson

      I agree with you 100pcnt.

  5. Mo

    Fred, it’s worth 0 words to people on mobile devices. I know it’s not your fault that Blackberry and iPhone don’t have flash but it does leave a significant segment of the readers in the dark. I am not as pessimistic as someone else who deemed it DOA in your post about video blogging but there is some truth to it. I don’t think we are quite ready yet.I will check these posts out but it will have to wait till I get on my laptop later today.

  6. jer979

    Huge fan of you/the blog, not a huge fan of the video approach. It’s an “attention economy” thing. I am trying to fly through RSS and pick up salient points. You can make the same in a paragraph or two w/o the pre-roll, the Blodget intro, for example) and the extra fluff.If I’m watching video online, it’s got to be a great supplement to the article, something entertaining/inspirational (a TED speech or the Free Hugs campaign), but the expectation from your blog is sharp, witty, effective, and insightful.But hey, it’s about the experiment, which is what I do admire.

    1. fredwilson

      Exactly. Glad you got the point

  7. Condor

    Maybe 16 y.o. kids don’t mind spending their time watching internet videos, but I for one do not. A regular article/entry is something I can read at the rate I want, when I want, etc. Videos demand too much attention, plain and simple. I guess I’ll miss all of your content today!

    1. vruz

      I sometimes minimise the browser and keep working or doing something else, basically the same usage pattern of a traditional radio.

  8. sdefor01

    Love the blogs, hate the videos. Not unique content for you and unuseable on my phone.

  9. handelaar

    Oh, it’s *you*, is it?I opened a bunch of tabs and something repeatedly crashed the browser. Having disabled Flash to be able to read anything, it turns out the only pages I had opened which could possibly have been responsible are these ones.I dunno what video service you’re using (have disabled the plugin so can’t see) but it kills FF3 stone dead on Linux.

  10. Udi

    I too vote for text. Way more efficient. A good picture btw, is still best at communicating crisply…

  11. vincentvw

    Great idea to post video on a Sunday. All other days, not everyone has time for it, but on a lazy day like today, why not!

  12. vruz

    I liked the videos, and I think it can be a great complement.That being said, a video-only blog (vlog?) may not be a good idea for a one-man show.It can be more immediate and fun when you don’t feel like writing a lot, to just rant and vent, and the vlogging is done in 5 minutes.The only missing technical problems:1) full screen was MIA2) collaborative text annotation, so that people can get a transcript and you don’t have to do it all yourself alone.my 2/100cheers !

  13. David

    Fred -Long-time reader (I only follow AVC, not your other Blog(ettes)), first-time commenter. I enjoyed the videos. It’s a good way to share more complex ideas that may be a bit dense to read.David

  14. joelkehle

    You video feeds don’t show up in my RSS Reader (Newsgator). Since I have over 500 articles to read today, clicking through to your website is inconvenient. I think other video feeds do show up on my reader. If you want to continue with video (which IMO is a good idea), you might want to fix how you package your feed.

  15. Steven Kane

    IMHO… two thumbs down.Way too clunky and time consuming and inefficient.

    1. fredwilson

      Then its history steve. I can’t be turning off my best commenters!

  16. Randall

    a thousand words may describe a picture, but hardly any thousand pictures can describe a word.