"Wordpress.com 20 years more advanced, for video blogging" is one of mine. I'd love to hear critiques of it. I realize the "pitch" is bad, but did you read any of the other sections?; I'm trying to convey that it's not just a hosted platform for video blogging, but that there's some technological innovation involved as well.
I think videoblogging has been done and done, different concepts, different ideas, several iterations, none have truly taken off. The points made already about people not being as open to it are valid, and even if/when you get past that barrier, you then have to start turning the users/readers. The nice thing about ~reading~ blogs is that you can bookmark, switch to another tab, highlight portions, and even email complete entries, all from the relative silence of your office cubicle.
you could build something very advanced (theme wise) and the back end coding on top of wordpress. If it worked well and I were a videoblogger, id pay for it.
That's not a bad WordPress theme idea. But that's not at all what I'm suggesting, because...
That doesn't improve the video player interface at all.
That doesn't make metadata for videos any better.
That doesn't provide any improvements in the ability to remix video.
That doesn't offer any advantages for having multiple video bloggers on the same platform.
That doesn't add any interactivity to video.
I feel like I'm saying, "There's a ton of room for innovation and additions to the paradigm of web-based video viewing", and you're saying: "sooo... a better theme, then?"
If you believe in the idea, just go ahead and build it.
I have seen a couple of times that the idea did not make any 'sense' to me during ideation stage, but when was presented with a working application - I just 'saw' it as needed!
For certain ideas, the way they are executed matters a lot.
The problem with video blogging is that it doesn't have the same mass appeal as text blogging. As uncomfortable as people are with their grammatical abilities, they still blog, constantly, no matter how much we hope they wouldn't. As for video blogging, the barrier to entry is a lot higher, and self-consciousness about "public" speaking and appearance severely stifle the potential "market".
I generally agree with you but I wonder if this is a generational issue. I personally would never leave a video comment to somebody's YouTube video. But I see a lot of younger people (e.g., under 23) who are absolutely comfortable doing so.
I disagree. I could see a platform for hosting video blogs working, despite people feeling self-conscious. The barrier to entry is really only a webcam on a laptop, and I believe YouTube proves that people are in general comfortable with themselves. Having a wordpress-style CMS dedicated to video submissions shouldn't be too difficult.
Great points. Maybe video "blogging" isn't the right term. There's definitely a lot more video content being produced these days, but little innovation in the platforms supporting it.
Part of the problem I feel with home-produced video is just the poor quality. A good number of us use macbooks with that awful little camera in the absolute wrong place. It's probably hard to do, but a video camera in the center of the screen would do wonders. And lighting tends to be an issue. I've been thinking of building a multi-pointed light meter (profably in software) and using that to control 2-4 strings of adjustable LEDs that would be to either side, plus maybe the top and bottom of my macbook pro. The idea here is that software could do a good job of adjusting the lighting for better quality.
