My Web is Text Based

http://www.marksonland.com/2009/02/my_web_is_text_based.html

by trs90 • 17 years ago

83 54 17 years ago

unalone• 17 years ago

This shift over to primarily video content irritates me: I like reading text, and video is difficult with my college's slow Internet.

jacquesm4• 17 years ago

I think the main reason why we're seeing such a shift is that in the long run it is easier to ram advertising down people's throats over a video link than it is to get them to click on ads in textual content. The CPM's paid for delivered video ads reflect that, they count those much higher than delivered (but not clicked) text or graphics (even flash) ads.

access_denied3• 17 years ago

Yes, and in the case of espn: you didn't think Joe Intosports likes to read (espicially at the evening, it's too much like work).

davidw3• 17 years ago

I don't know... there are also a lot of 'screencasts' coming out from developers. Personally I can't really stand them, for most of the reasons mentioned elsewhere in this thread. The only excuse for them that I could see would be that they'd be easier to put together than a well-written article with appropriate code clippings and images, but I'm skeptical of that.

nazgulnarsil4• 17 years ago

people don't like reading. most people read @ an 8th grade level because of the brain damage inflicted by mandatory government education.

andylei2• 17 years ago

most people probably would be illiterate without a mandatory government education

nazgulnarsil4• 17 years ago

please don't upvote such ahistorical nonsense. Even the most casual examination of historical records reveals this to be false.

In the early 1800s, Pierre Samuel Dupont, an influential French citizen who helped Thomas Jefferson negotiate for the Louisiana Purchase, came to America and surveyed education here. He found that most young Americans could read, write, and "cipher" (do arithmetic), and that Americans of all ages could and did read the Bible. He estimated that fewer than four Americans in a thousand were unable to write neatly and legibly.

people were fine before the advent of the nanny state in 1933.

krishna2• 17 years ago

I completely agree and my visits to such sites have gone down as well. Other sites that I have stopped visiting less include sports.yahoo.com and movies.yahoo.com. And don't even get me started with tv.yahoo.com.

hulk222• 17 years ago

There was a reason to reading the sports section!

theotherjimmy• 17 years ago

It seems to be what keeps a large puportion of the american population reading! However, it does not make business sense.

antiismist3• 17 years ago

I feel the same way about ESPN. I like reading interesting articles about sports but it is actually not that easy to find good content - there is no hacker news for sports (yet!).

jfornear• 17 years ago

I was throwing together a Techmeme for sports, and while compiling a list of sources, I ran into this same problem. As far as I know, there isn't enough sports content out there, which makes sense if you think about it.

sachinag• 17 years ago

You're insane. The TrueHoop network alone has enough good content to fill eight hours a day, and that's just U.S. NBA basketball.

The issue with sports is that there's a ton of re-blogged information, so the issue is finding the original source algorithmically.

What you should do, if you're serious, is rank articles by the length. It's a brute force measure, and it won't be accurate, but it's a good place to start.

Then, figure out a way for people do isolate it to their teams. The Southern Illinoisan newspaper is probably going to be the best source for news about the SIU Salukis, but I never remember to go there, so I get excited when I see a snippet on ESPN.com. You find a way to get me the best news about my Cubs, Salukis, White Sox, Bulls, Illini, Bears, Fire, Arsenal, Blackhawks, and so forth down my ladder and you'll mint money.

antiismist3• 17 years ago

True. I had something small deployed for a while but it ran into that same issue.

mattmcknight• 17 years ago

I've been feeling this way about CNN for a while. Many of the video links have "teaser" headlines as well. Definitely not worth watching a commercial. Fortunately, there are plenty of alternatives for news.

jimbokun4• 17 years ago

I find Bill Simmons writing on sports excellent. He kind of disguises the quality of his writing with the references to crappy pop culture and the sophomoric behavior of him and his buddies. But in doing so I think he reveals a lot about who sports fans really are, not some idealized version. He often talks about whether or not he has wasted his life by devoting so much time and effort to following sports and making jokes about how pathetic his wife thinks he is for agonizing over his fantasy teams (she calls his fantasy league "The League of Dorks").

I find it hard to get into other sports writers now, partly because Simmons does such a good job skewering them. When they try to make sports into something epic or sacred, Simmons is quick to point out all the frailties of both the competitors and the poor saps who devote too much time to something that doesn't really mean all that much to their lives.

And then he dives right back into reveling in the joy of being passionate about something that is ultimately meaningless, capturing the essence of being a sports fan.

(I have no idea why I just wrote three paragraphs about this. Must be infected by whatever gets into Simmons when he does one of those day long live chats.)

brandnewlow2• 17 years ago

I've never been one for team sports, preferring running, swimming and the like.

But I have read and will read anything written by Bill Simmons. The man is one of the great writers of our time. He's the Stephen King of sports writers, a guy who keeps pumping out solid, often great stuff that transcends his genre.

I don't follow football, but I read Simmons' picks during the season. I don't follow basketball, but I read his trade value column every year. Why? Because

-the guy explains it in an interesting way -puts it in the proper perspective like you said -links me out to great, great stuff I never would have found otherwise (like the greatest YouTube video ever: http://sports.espn.go.com/espnmag/story?section=magazine&...) -is now living a bit of a glamorous, interesting life that's fun to experience vicariously -can write like the devil

This is a guy who took a week to review the Karate Kid trilogy in detail instead of filing regular columns one summer. http://espn.go.com/page2/movies/s/simmons/020830.html

And yet he attended a funeral for a young athlete who died senselessly, and wrote a "serious" piece that was moving, humble and very honest: http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/page2/story?page=simmons/0803...

There are writers who excel at structure, writers who are idea guys, writers who can nail little details, and then there are writers who simply have more firepower than the average man. They can write more, faster, and with more panache than 99% of the folks out there. It won't all be good, but it'll all be interesting. Simmons has a lot of firepower.

Which, to get back on topic, is why it's INFURIATING, that he's cranking out 3-4 podcasts a month and only 1-2 columns at this point. I simply can't listen to the podcasts. They don't fit into my schedule at all, in any way. I don't have an hour to stare at my computer while it plays an audio stream. Bring back the columns.

antiismist3• 17 years ago

I used to be into Bill Simmons but lately not so much. I think once his wife (who knows nothing about football) beat him in NFL weekly predictions is when I made the switch from Simmons to Gregg Easterbrook.

bobbyi• 17 years ago

If you don't like video, maybe you shouldn't be going to the web site of a cable channel?

KaiP• 17 years ago

The main problem I have with video over text is that it takes much longer to convey the same information. I can read about 5 times faster (450-500 wpm) than most video (90-100 wpm). So other than special cases where video is crucial, I much prefer text.

bk• 17 years ago

On top of that you can't scan, skim, skip, and search it nearly as well. It's thus much harder to assess the value of video/audio content up front.

jkkramer• 17 years ago

Sometimes I like watching videos precisely because it's slower: the delivery has nuance; I can ruminate a bit; things stick in my memory. A good speaker can really amplify the meaning and memorability of information.

Really, it depends on the situation. Speed isn't always the most important thing.

whatusername• 17 years ago

"A good speaker can really amplify the meaning and memorability of information." I think a lot of the TED talks prove this point!

(still - i'd love to see transcripts)

jacquesm4• 17 years ago

My response to video links is to simply ignore them (which is quite ironic, given my background).

If you can't find the time to at least accompany your video with a textual representation then I'm not interested, I think the choice of medium should lie with the recipient, not with the producer.

access_denied3• 17 years ago

The choice of medium will lie with the recipient. That's the promise the web holds for us. I hope it fullfills it.

jimbokun4• 17 years ago

I have the same issue, generally preferring text over video, but I make an exception for espn.com. Usually I want to pick and choose game highlights to watch (such as seeing what kind of freakish dunks LeBron unleashed last night). I don't even get the ESPN cable station, but I find the user experience of watching highlights of any game played whenever I want, and switch back and forth between highlights, write-ups, and box scores, to be a far superior experience than just watching Sports Center.

Now, watching the talking heads instead of just reading a write-up, I do not get at all. It always confuses me to see a lot of the talking head videos near the top of the "most watched" lists.

sqs• 17 years ago

Also, I often can't watch video content without unplugging my speakers and putting my headphones in so I don't disturb other people. Oh, and my laptop fan starts going like crazy and my CPU goes to 100% with FLV.

wenbert• 17 years ago

God I hate Flash on Mac. Burns up my CPU for watching a 3 minute video...

joubert• 17 years ago

I use ClickToFlash http://github.com/rentzsch/clicktoflash/tree/master

ewiethoff• 17 years ago

Video is an effective way to warm the planet, burn nonrenewable fuels, and send more batteries to toxic dump sites.

jacquesm4• 17 years ago

There is a pet peeve of mine, I usually have my monitors speakers plugged in and active, so if I land on a page that starts playing some silly video I run the risk of waking up the whole house. Ads with video in them are even worse, a surefire way to let me never ever visit that site again (these warrant an entry in my hosts file).

sobriquet• 17 years ago

I totally agree. Why would I watch a video if I'm looking to navigate somewhere?

However, big brands might find creative ways to use them on search results. Check out the one for Pedigree (http://search.yahoo.com/search?p=pedigree) This commercial first ran during the Super Bowl and is pretty funny. I'll bet certain campaigns could do well in search, prodding the user to dive into the ad experience more (i.e. hangintherejack.com)

mixmax• 17 years ago

Video is primarily for entertainment, text is for conveying information. At least on the net.

Newspapers don't seem to understand this - a lot of them are starting to have videoclips on their sites, apparently to grab marketshare from TV. It's much more expensive than writing an article, and it doesn't work. There are, of course exceptions: "nipslips", catastrophes and such call for video, but most news don't.

brandnewlow2• 17 years ago

A-men! U.S. j-schools are obsessed with turning everyone into multimedia reporters...when people still just want great text stories.

The original post is great. I'm sending it to all my journalism buddies.

KWD• 17 years ago

Agree. It's especially annoying when the video link is not marked as such on the newspaper site. I immediately bounce back. If I wanted video I'd be elshewhere.

access_denied3• 17 years ago

What I find interesting that with espn.com in the first paragrpahs, he describes one of the futures of television (Future? end game.).

markessien2• 17 years ago

The problem does not lie with video - the problem is that video today is very linear. Even people who think they prefer text do not actually do so - they just prefer being in control of the reading speed and being able to immediately jump to the information they want.

Imagine video that behaved like a real person sitting opposite you. You type in google - "Where is Tibet", and a video immediately pops up with a person who says "Tibet is in China" and at the bottom of the video a bunch of relevant extra information popup, allowing you to jump up and down in the video. This would work a lot better.

Video has to become searchable, navigable, and you should be able to have an information context in any videos that you watch. Then the web will benefit by becoming video based.

davidw3• 17 years ago

So instead of a 17-byte string, you get some enormous video (not simply audio, but a video with pictures and everything) of someone telling you exactly the same thing that you could have read in a few seconds?

I agree that things like searchable video have their place, but it is not for stuff like that!

markessien2• 17 years ago

Don't let bad implementations constrain your imagination!

jodrellblank2• 17 years ago

I kind of agree here - I much prefer the control over text, until the text gets massive. It's very easy to keep getting lost in one big page of text when trying to follow along a guide of something.

It's also pretty bad trying to follow guides when the text is full of pictures.

Google finance has a fantastic dynamic web application feature - it has a big graph of stock price for the stock you are looking at, and next to it a list of news items relevant to that company and its industry.

As you zoom and scroll the graph, the news items change to only show news for the time period you are looking at.

jimbokun4• 17 years ago

No, I really just want the text.

What you describe sounds like the Clippy-fication of Google, a terrifying thought.

TweedHeads• 17 years ago

For me, videos on the web should be no longer than a minute. A funny cat, a plane crashing, a meteor shower, etc. concise and to the point.

I can't stand long conversations in video that can be resumed in ten lines of text.

My Web is Text Based

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