I love reading, and I have a pile of interesting books waiting for me to dig through them. I’ve just picked up [The Black Swan](http://climbtothestars.org/archives/2007/10/15/reading-the-black-swan/) where I left it over a month ago.
One of my frustrations with reading, I realise, is the difficulty in sharing the interesting stuff I discover. Being an online person, I’m used to being able to share all the interesting stuff I find or think of very easily. Going from printed book to the web is not that simple.
I painstakingly typed up quotes in [my tumblr](http://steph.tumblr.com) but honestly, it’s not the best solution. Maybe somebody will offer me a pen-scanner one day (that would be fun!) but in the meantime, I’m a bit stuck without a good bridge between my dead-tree reading and my online community.
So, I just did an experiment with Seesmic. I read out quotes and commented some of the stuff I was reading. There are two videos because (as I just discovered!) Seesmic cuts you off at 10 minutes. In total, here are 16 minutes or so of me rambling on and reading quotes to you.
The Black Swan I
The Black Swan II
Sorry for those of you who can’t see the videos. For those of you who can, do let me know if you think this is a good idea or not.
Update: more videos…
The Black Swan III
The Black Swan IV
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Good videos, Steph: “The Black Swan” sounds like an interesting book! I especially liked your student strike story: it’s true to my own experience! 🙂
Interesting experiment, and definitely a must-read book. But while video-storytelling make it easier for you to “share”, it makes it more difficult for the people at the other end to receive and benefit from that sharing: the same comments and quotes put in a blog post are easily scannable, digestible, I can copy/paste them into further blog posts (hence, further sharing). Video kills all that: people have to watch 36 minutes of videos (in 36 minutes you could have typed ALOT of quotes) to know what you say, cannot scan, can’t fast-forward (since they have no idea where to fast-forward to), and can’t do any further sharing.
You’re perfectly right, Bruno. My complaint with audio and video (and Seesmic!) is that it’s very easy to produce (in a raw format) but much more difficult to digest or use. I personally really don’t think that this is a viable way of sharing stuff instead of writing about it. But I’m interested, still: do I reach different people? Do I touch the people who view the videos differently?
Video is clearly very attractive, and I’m trying to figure out what it is exactly that makes people watch it so much, despite all the drawbacks that you mentioned.
You're perfectly right, Bruno. My complaint with audio and video (and Seesmic!) is that it's very easy to produce (in a raw format) but much more difficult to digest or use. I personally really don't think that this is a viable way of sharing stuff instead of writing about it. But I'm interested, still: do I reach different people? Do I touch the people who view the videos differently?
Video is clearly very attractive, and I'm trying to figure out what it is exactly that makes people watch it so much, despite all the drawbacks that you mentioned.
Love your comments…
That’s what happens to me when I read an interesting book… It takes really long time to finish the book because I have tons of thoughts that pop up in my mind so at the end I spend lots of time writing down new ideas, post drafts etc.
Like I told you via Twitter I really love these videos!
About, video VS text…
I think that video gives a better and more personal idea of what you want to share, but on the other hand text gives more ‘order’ to your thoughts.
I think that one of the main differences is about the ‘experience’. Video offers a totally different ‘user experience’ than text. This is what we should keep in mind.
For example when I look at the content of Fresh Lime Soda I want to have a video experience because I think that is much more engaging for me to watch you and Suw instead of reading a never ending chat.
According to which type of ‘channel’ we are using (video/audio or text) we change also the way we share it and browse it, but of course that’s part of the experience we choose to have.
(about the down sides of multimedia content I link back to what Bruno said…good comment)
This is an interesting topic that makes me think about how people consume content and how the online communication is changing.
Andrea