Why I prefer text to video
Videos are becoming more and more common on the internet, and for some things, like mentos and diet pepsi, they're hard to beat. For things I'm seriously interested in, though, I prefer text. Here's why:
- Text goes at my speed. I read quickly, and certainly faster than people can talk. If I want to slow down and reread something, I can do that too.
- Video, outside of actual video chats, is not interactive, so I don't get the benefits of being there, being able to interrupt, ask questions, and so on, that can make the 'in person' experience superior to just reading about something.
- Text is searchable and indexable. I can search within a page, and it's also more likely to be visible to search engines.
- Text is easy to scan and glance at.
- Given the ease of scanning text, it's also easier to filter: "is this something I want to invest more time in reading?". In the time many videos use for people to simply introduce themselves, I could have already got an idea of a document is worth further perusal.
- Text is easy to manipulate; cutting, pasting, quoting, etc... are all easy.
- I don't have to put on headphones to read text if my wife is sleeping and I'm working late.
- Text has good, and highly visible conventions (various headings and subheadings) for indicating subsections of a large document and what they may be about.
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about {{count}} hours later:
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My thoughts exactly! Thanks! And no thanks to all those people spamming me with links to Ted talks or Flash videos…
about {{count}} hours later:
+1!!!
about {{count}} hours later:
"Video, outside of actual video chats," do you claim that text (in books, articles etc) is interactive?
"Text is searchable and indexable." Video as well, and people (and computers) are better and better with it.
But of course you are right in many things and video is not full substitute to text.
about {{count}} hours later:
That's true, text has many advantages over video. Video lets you pick up more contextual detail, however... richer. Should be complementary experiences, not competing.
Two years ago there were experiments with video-commenting on weblogs, haven't heard much about that lately.... ;-)
jd/adobe
{{count}} days later:
That sentence has suggested me an idea: a platform similar to a blog, where the reader can highlight a portion of text (or more) in order to: 1) vote/like it 2) submit a comment referred to that portion (and eventually get replies, from the author or other users).
And automatically, a "pseudo-summary" of the text is shown (above or below the original post), showing only the highlighted portions of text, and with a slider that allows to change how long the summary is (i.e. only portions of text collectively highlighted more than the threshold set). Hover on the text from the pseudo-summary, or on the highlighted text from the post, shows the non-anonumous users who have highlighted it (similar to viewing who has pressed "Like" in a comment on Facebook).
Clicking on text from the pseudo-summary, makes the page move on the post and flashes the clicked portion of text.
Makes sense?