I Don’t Think Instagram for Videos Are Such Great Ideas
| April 19th, 2012
Arguably I’ve yet to try any of these new fangled video sharing services (such as Viddy), so everything you read here might be a crock of rubbish. Either way, I’ll put a few thoughts down as to why I don’t think the sharing of short video clips may not be as hot as sharing snapshots with your friends. I do intend to try it out some time, and I may be pleasantly surprised after it all.
1. The media takes too much time to consume
In my opinion, one of the successes of Instagram is that the media is static. You can spend as quick one second glancing through a picture, or you could look at it for hours (say a really cute cat/dog). Most of the time, the image jumps out at you straight away and captures your attention at that very moment. The emotion it evokes is almost instantaneous. Video on the other hand, requires a more complex thought process to appreciate, and the video uploader is also constrained to most “rules” of visual communication and I would argue, videos might be more boring even though there is kinetic energy within the frame. As such, I think the barrier for entry to appreciate video might be higher than it is to appreciate still shots.
2. Is 15 seconds too long or too short?
A point worth discussing. Some filmmakers might find the 15 second time limit of videos on Viddy too short, some might find it just right. The point is that we’re stuck with a limit as to what we can upload. With static images, there is no limit, because while each frame is an instant, abstractly, there is an instantaneous amount of time captured in a still moment, whereas with video, you’re forced to view time linearly. As media consumers, most of us are used to the idea of video being a long-form medium, with edits in between and it ultimately tells a sort of story. 15 seconds might be too short for some uploaders, while others will cleverly work around the constraints by reimagining the purpose of the medium. I think most of us fall under the former category.
3. Most people don’t know how to take videos
And I mean, videos that do grab your attention so that you don’t feel like you’re wasting too much time on the application, and just watching 15 second clips of shakey cameras or scenic landscapes (though that in itself can be rather breathtaking). My point is that there’s already a lot of amateurish crap on YouTube, so do we really want that sort of visual standard to be a norm? This also leads me to my next point.
4. Video sharing mobile apps ultimately feel like a recycled idea
There are already multiple video sharing sites such as YouTube and Vimeo that are more catered to long-form video styles, something I would argue that consumers are more familiar with, and uploaders are familiar with too. Their mobile apps are not too shabby as well, and you can appreciate the discovery process as well, since there are more people uploading and tagging videos to said sites/services. If I were to discover videos on an app like Viddy, I imagine it’s not something that I can’t already find on YouTube, although I may be wrong, and there could be a whole community of micro-filmmakers out there. But I’m not holding my breath, most of us are amateur video producers / directors and the same quality of videos is probably waiting to be discovered on Viddy which I doubt will succeed in holding my interest.
5. Video sharing apps are not changing anything
This could be a risky statement, but I feel that the successes of Instagram (static images), is due to the way it changed the way we consume visual information. It brought everything to one central location while at the same time allowing you to upload to the rest of your own personal digital assets. It made it compelling to upload and consume. I’m not so sure about Viddy, as I’ve pointed out in all my earlier opinions that video and images are most likely different mediums. Applying a template of Instagram (filters, following interesting uploaders and allowing one to upload to multiple platforms) may seem like a no-brainer since all of us enjoy videos. But how many of us enjoy taking videos and packaging videos in a way that is interesting to consume? I don’t foresee people talking about certain video uploaders going viral on Viddy as opposed to how YouTube has a better service to encourage that. As consumers, we’re just not used to the short amateurish video content that the majority of us puts up. In the end, apps like Viddy are not changing the way we consume visual images of the multimedia kind, and as such, it would be foolhardy to think that such apps can mirror the success of Instagram. (Also a nicer way of saying, be careful what you invest in.)
In closing
I’ve said most of these statements in the context that I tried out a very buggy app called SocialCam, and I sometimes capture videos with the 8mm app, and email 50second clips to Posterous which sends it to my YouTube channel. Sure, Viddy could centralise it all in one location, and there may be a community of videomakers there, but even I don’t find my videos on YouTube fascinating, so I’m wondering whether a hypothetical, small community is enough to sustain the use of apps like Viddy.
That said, I will probably try the app out just to see if these opinions do have any weight, and I’m also interested to discover interesting ways that uploaders have broken the mould of producing video content.
