I have mentioned a few times in my blog posts regarding services like YouTube that the often overlooked factor here is that they are social sites, not just video viewing/sharing sites.
In fact the driving forces at work on those sites are most definitely of a social nature.
If you want to gain any traction at all and get your projects viewed by a wider audience you have to understand and apply social principles.
For the average user this can be as simple as watching and commenting on other people’s projects, subscribing to channels or even posting “video replies” to their work.
Just because some of the big brands can buy their way to the top doesn’t mean that the little guy is forever doomed to anonymity!
In fact some of the biggest movers and shakers started off as fabulous nobodies before they became fabulous somebodies and they did it by combining interesting videos with plenty of social interaction.
The (Video) Travel Bug
One internet trend that has been unmistakable over the past few years is the way in which you and I are using different methods to find things.
When the internet itself began the process of introducing itself to mainstream society and becoming more and available to the average person, one thing became abundantly clear.
The internet was not the “information super highway” everyone tried to make us believe it was.
In fact the internet was more like a steaming morass of information, confusion and disorganization and to most people was pretty useless!
Of course it was at that time that the search engines came along and began the process of crawling the content on the web, sorting it and then presenting it as a searchable index.
This was the birth of services we now know as Google, Yahoo, and Bing.
Up until about 5 years ago these entities invested huge amounts of money in an effort to refine and improve their search services to a point where now they are incredibly sophisticated and very accurate.
The one thing they have never been able to overcome is that as good as they are, they are being used by humans, and humans would generally much rather talk to other humans when it comes to finding out stuff.
It’s just the way we are.
So, as a result of this we have now seen the incredible rise of the social networks such as Twitter, FaceBook etc.
Most people tend to think of these services as purely social but the truth is that they serve a secondary purpose that represents the first real threat to the search engines.
On an ever increasing level people are using FaceBook, Twitter and more importantly, YouTube to find things and to find out things.
The power they have is that when we are using these networks we are talking to real people and very often people we actually know.
Marketers have long known that the most powerful method of getting a brand into your head or getting a final decision on a sale has always been and most likely always will be a personal recommendation from someone you know or are at least acquainted with.
You can search for the best software on Google and get a bunch of results that may or may not be accurate or helpful.
Or, you can get onto YouTube or FaceBook and post a question and get help, advice, information or recommendations that may or may not be accurate BUT (and it’s a big one!), because they come from your “tribe,” you “circle” you will be far more likely to act upon those recommendations than any other.
This slow progression towards the personal recommendation is now beginning to pervade even the most traditional markets like “Travel” which have historically been strictly for the pros.
Now I know this site deals predominantly with video stuff for the amateur but when you think about it, anyone with some video skills already could quite possible take advantage of this and who knows!
Screen Casting Tips
Some excellent tips here for those of you that mat engage in screencasting. In fact even though screencasting is the main focus of the video interview most of the points mentioned can be successfully applied to videos in general and especially to screencapture type projects.
- Become Better at Screencasting: Tips from Anton Bollen
Spotting Fakes
Sometimes these days it feels like I have started my own battery storage facility in my office.
I have batteries for just about everything I use on a daily basis and of course not one battery can be used in more than one device!
I read a great article a few years back detailing the exact step you need to take to preserve a rechargeable battery to extract the maximum efficiency out of it and make it last as long as possible.
Of course with the number of different types of batteries I have this in itself would turn into a full time job. So…
The bottom line is that I don’t generally take care of them as well as I should and as a result I, probably like the rest of you, am always having to buy new ones.
The expense of some of the more exotic batteries can lead you pretty quickly into that dangerous land of buying fakes or “generic” types.
Although in many cases these can be OK as far as retaining and delivering charge goes the problem with them often lies in the way the battery communicates with the device.
Most batteries these days have some kind of chip or circuitry onboard that allows them to communicate with the device and give you an accurate idea as to how much operating time you have left.
GoPro Need for Speed
OK, I am pretty sure none of us are going to go out and replicate any of these stunts… at least not in the local neighbourhood! By hey! It looks like total fun!
- How the Pros Used GoPros in the Filming of Need for Speed
Vine News
If you are a Vine user then things just got a little better for you! Over on the Vine blog this week they have announced an upgrade to their app to make uploading faster and easier as well as improvements to the editing interface.
New Vine camera: Shoot, import, edit and share — fast
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