I am finding it easier and easier to just click record and speak my thoughts into some form or video blogging application.
It all began with Seesmic and now in addition (especially when wanting to cross post and use multimedia) I also use Phreadz. For live streaming (in my opinion), there is still only Qik.
The more I used these places the more I noticed a dip in my frequency to blog and podcast. It’s just too easy. If I have a question, thought, idea or master plan I would like to bounce off someone, I just press a button, speak my mind and before I have time to log out, I have an inbox full of answers replies and comments.
Coupled with the bind it can sometimes be to actually write a blog post and I am amazed these pages ever change.
Don’t get me wrong.. I love this WordPress template. It has enabled me to cram all kinds of content onto the front page of my blog. It’s well laid out and easy to use.
Many of the settings lie dormant beneath the surface as I don’t feel the need to use all the whistles and bells at my disposal.
I love the integration of the images to highlight the articles on the front page but if I originally thought I would take my time to grow into this blog template, I am now finding that I’m taking too much time to do each blog. As a result I write less as I can’t just ‘bang out’ an idea and make it live. Not like I can when posting a video.
Just as I have massively reduced the production time on my podcasts by keeping it simple, maybe I can do the same here? Instead of having to upload two new and unique graphics every time I do a new blog, I think if I already have a selection of stock avatar-type images to link to on my server I am more likely to want to drop little ditties, thoughts and ideas onto a web page.
Sometimes I feel you have to worry less about how it looks in order to get the content out there. I guess I realized this a while ago. Maybe I just didn’t want to let go of my initial way of doing things.
Our Man Inside on 12seconds.tv
Now with the emergence if 12 seconds all hell has broken loose in my video blogging world. I’m not sure what it is that I find compelling.. Perhaps it’s fitting stuff within the time constraints.. Maybe it’s the distillation of peoples humour and the visual snippets of their lives? It’s all so easy to digest in small bitesize chunks without feeling that you should be doing something else.
No one rambles. There is no feeling of time-suck, your life ebbing away as you wait for someone to make their point. I guess this sounds selfish but when you surround yourself with creative minds, absorbing their media all day, everyday, be it blogs, podcasts or videos, you sometimes just want a mini media snack, not a full blown mind meal. If you do not limit the time you put aside to take all of this media in.. before you know it, the day has gone and you are wishing you turned off hours ago.
I don’t get that with 12 seconds, at least not at the moment.. Who knows where it will go. I guess I kind of like it being a different beast to the other places I frequent. If I want threaded conversation (..and i do.. often) I have those places. If I want a 12 second stand alone snippit.. it’s perfect.
Maybe we will soon see replies and threading, perhaps it will become more of a video-Plurk rather than a video-Twitter.
Part of me hopes not. Comments are enough for me right now and I think I would like to see 12seconds evolve along it’s own pedigree, not cross breed into another social media mongrel.
Only time will tell.
Loads of good stuff here as usual. I love the term “social media mongrel” and intend to use it a lot. Always had a soft spot for mutts.
I sure enjoy watching 12 Seconds a lot more than the other sites. I can watch a pile without wasting an afternoon.
Re. the new template causing you to pause you may wanna think about setting up something on Tumblr. I have one that I don’t use much, but if you just want a quick and easy blogging solution to throw thoughts at the way you do 12 Seconds you can always then pool the results here once a week maybe?
And you may be keeping one thing unintentionally short. Your RSS feed comes into Google reader as a snippet rather than the full post. Yours is the only blog I take the time to jump through and read. Any other blog that doesn’t give me a full post via RSS gets culled pretty quickly.
Hi Mike,
Cheers for taking the time to comment.
As soon as i said ‘Social Media Mongrel’ i bought the .com (http://www.socialmediamongrel.com) (Media Mongrel was gone).. I just linked it to one of those sites most of my spontaneous purchases go.. The kind of site that once a year gives you 25p in earnings for two hours of setting up.
I do have a tumbler account.. http://documentally.tumblr.com/ but my iphone has hung onto the last ten posts and won’t let them go.
I will look at my rss feed.. I would like it to say more but remember looking last time and could not find out where to adjust it..
Cheers Mike,
Christian
Hi Christian.
I find the same thing happened with Twitter : that my blogging frequency went WAY down.
What sites have turned into a ‘mongrel’?
When I switch on the Phreadz crossposting to blog/twitter/12seconds/sessmic etc, maybe you’ll see it more as a production tool, simplifying the distribution and participation in any of the platforms
K
You make good points, Christian.
At the moment, I prefer the longer videos I find on Qik. I’m following the people who create these videos and the narrative of their lives as much as I am the substance of the ideas they are expressing. I just loved watching your videos of Geekbury.
Much of what I see on 12seconds is just too pithy to be of great interest to me. However, its early days yet and we have yet to see where it all leads.
As for the time it takes to write a blog, I guess that is what makes them so special. I can imagine a time when text is not the primary mode of communication, but we aren’t there yet.
Kosso, I think when you put all the things into Phreadz that you really want it may well be the one stop shop everyone is looking for.
I have become a mongrel because I spread myself around all the platforms, not so much in a negative way, as it’s good to have the choice. More so because no one place has it all… Yet
I think to make Phreadz perfect (for me) I would love to be able to have the RSS feed from http://documentaly.phreadz.com as my main podcast feed. That way i could throw all the videos and audio i want into my channel and as if by magic my podcast would be updated in iTunes and whichever other aggregater has my feed.
I think people would pay good money for that.
Hi Weaseltagger,
Good points and kind words. Thanks.
You are right of course. There are limits to how much you can put across in 12 seconds. That is why in some ways the better content stands out about the purely pithy stuff. ..And also why I don’t think I will ever stop using services like Qik. (http://www.qik.com/documentally).
But when you do want to be pithy.. 12 seconds is as good a place as any to go and express oneself.
I understand your perspective, however from your “audience” perspective (that is to say, mine of course), the blog remains the best place to go when looking for what productions have been made from a given person.
Following everyone everywhere would be too complicate and I am not even talking of time-consuming, it is simply impossible. With the blogs I know that there will be some place where I will always find something I am pleased to find (read, listen to, look at, etc.).
I love when people I follow keep up with their blogs, because of that reason.
I think you’ve become an expert in using whichever tool works for you in the moment. And I agree with your suggestions to Kosso.
To get your full feed out via RSS- go to Settings >Reading and choose Full Text
I love your Twitter comments and watch all your 12 second bits. You’re brilliant. I wholeheartedly agree with the whole philosophy of 12 seconds. I think most blogs could be boiled down to a sentence or two.
Added this post to the list:
http://tinyurl.com/6gp8ep
Peace
DK
MediaSnackers Founder / Speaker / Trainer
Medium, medium, medium, with almost zero message. I predict all this hyper, web 2, social this, dig-it that, delicious, blogging, whatever, has maybe hit its peak and will not last more than another few years.
First there was the dot.com boom, and now this. Its like tapas, rather than a good meal. The Kids are all doing it, so to speak, and the real kids will continue that way alongside their playstations and ADD. But I can’t see the adults keeping this momentum in the air; its ultimately just one dimensional, limited, and thus boring.
Unlike multidimensional, unlimited non-boring media like… erm… Eastenders? Guy Richie movies? Ufucking2 albums?
Early days yet, but once this stuff gets even easier to aggregate, deep tag etc and the tools hit the mainstream… hell, I work with some pretty big companies right now that are desperate to tap into this because it offers a new way of doing things.
It may not be THE way, but that’s the exciting thing about new stuff – who the hell knows where it’ll go? Some of the stuff we’re learning and creating now *will* break out though.
I’d rather bet on that than stand on the sidelines saying “this’ll never work…”
ps I love Tapas
Hi Blip, you make some good points, but I would have to disagree. I think the only thing that is going to knock the present form of social media, is a new form.
Social Media isn’t new.. It’s just maturing. I am still a member of on-line communities that were born out of usenet then migrated into mailing lists in the early 90’s
I think social media is here to stay. It’s old school media that needs to adapt.
Just my thoughts
Social media is certainly here to stay. It would have arrived earlier but technological resources (bandwidth, integrated web cams, storage space) presented a barrier.
As the barriers have been removed the take up of social media has increased.
For me the key question is how wide the participation will become.? Will social media enable cross cultural communication between diverse communities?
In any event social media will become a permanent part of our lives. It is here to stay.
I agree with what you said to Kosso, hopefully Pheadz can be the one stop shop. I pay fro my own video hosting at BitGravity but put all my videos on all the major sites for distribution but it takes a lot of time, wish I could upload once and distribute automatically. As far as 12 sec, I understand you snacking reference,a term has actually been coined “Video Snacking” and at BU we try to keep content at 5 to 15 min(snack size) for produced video but since I got a Flip Video I want to integrate that to the blog because some things are better on the fly and spontaneous. And after typing all of this I just realized you have the Seesmic video reply, damn I should have just made a video:)
In reply to Bip.
You say that all this Social networking will be gone in a few years and things will move on. Well that’s not exactly a bold prediction is it?
In a few years the internet will have changed beyond all recognition as it has in the last few years, as has technology in every aspect of life and industry.
Social media will evolve as it is already doing so. I think the only thing that may die is the mundane aspect of the social networking and new media community.
When you say the kids may keep it up but the adults will move in, I think you have it the wrong way round. Once the kids get bored telling the world what they had for breakfast or that they just farted in front of the vicar, the people who will keep this going and who will shape its future will be the pioneers: Those who come up with new ways of using the medium and transforming it as technology develops.
Still that is my opinion and I respectfully acknowledge that you have a right to yours too.
Peace.
Documentally. Thanks for sowing the seed of interest and learning for me with all this stuff. I’m always a bit slow to get going, but I can see new possibilities for my own projects because of it, so cheers.
@blip – I think as technology develops the barriers to creating content (good and bad) go way down and appeal to a wider audience. I really feel as if creating social media will melt away and turn into life itself.