Why I’m not watching your videos

Posted by stuart as video blogging, blogging, blog

More and more people seem to be posting videos on their blogs lately, which I reckon is really cool, but just don’t expect me to watch them.

I understand from a bloggers perspective that videos might be quicker and easier to make than writing a blog post, and you might have a head that’s worthwile looking at (trust me when I say I have a head which is suited perfectly for text blogging…), but your reasons for video blogging just might not gel with your readers wants and needs.

So here’s a few reasons why I’m not watching your video blog posts.

1. It takes too long - I just did a little testing, and it appears that I can scan text at a rate of about 800 words a minute, but only talk at a rate of around 260 words a minute. That means that for a 1,000 word post/video, I can read it in around one minute 20 seconds, where I have to sit through you talking for around four minutes (and this doesn’t even take into account buffering time etc). I’m a busy man with little free time, so this is a real negative.
2. It’s a pain in the ass to quote you. Sure, I can type out what you said in the video, and link to the video saying something like “watch the video, and at 2min 36seconds in, they say……..”. I could do that, but I’m a lazy, lazy man, so I’m not going to.
3. I can’t search your posts. Quite often I remember something that I’ve read at a particular blog, so I go to that blog and search using terms I think you might have used in the post. I can’t do this with video.
4. I can’t watch your videos in my feedreader. I only visit the blogs I read if I want to leave a comment. Other than that, it’s feedreader all the way. I’m sure you posting video sends your page views through the roof, maybe that’s why you do them, to force feed readers to come to the site?
5. I have to be at my computer. I read my blogs on the run, either on my phone or PDA while I’m out and about. I’m not going to watch your videos while my phone network provder is limiting my bandwidth use. I’m happy to read your text content though.
6. I have to have the sound on. I do most of my blog reading late at night when the rest of my family is asleep. Hence I need to be quiet. Yes I could get some headphones and listen, but your content would want to be bloody amazing for me to go to this effort.
7. Text content is just easier to digest, and recall. When reading a blog post, quite often I go back and re-read parts of the post to make sure that I’m reading other parts of the post in the right context. I can’t do this with video.

So there are my seven reasons for not watching your video posts.

Do you video post? Am I wrong?

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