At FireAnt, we’re about to release our new videoblog directory.
It’s hooks right into the app, making it easy to find feeds and subscribe.
It’s an open directory as well. It works well.
On the Videoblogging list, we’ve been discussing why text blogs don’t have directories.
The answer: they have great search engines that search blog posts…like technorati. Peter from mefeedia had some good reasons why videoblogs NEED directories:
First, with video, you need a lot more info to decide where to put
your attention than with text, because video demands more attention
(you can’t just quickly scan it like a text post, for example). So for
video, you need more filters, metadata, information that helps you
decide what to put your limited attention towards. It’s an attention
war. Hence, directories can be useful.Second: we as vloggers, for some reason, aren’t really linking a lot
to each other’s videos. I’m not sure why that is. But it does mean
that we have less interlinking than textbloggers to help people
discover new stuff. Hence, a directory makes sense, again.Third: search for video is an unsolved problem, and will continue to
be, especially for our type of long tail video. Hence, .. you get the
picture
I think its true that people dont link to videoblogs like text blogs.
here’s why: when i link to a text blog, I include it into my words…making it my own.
But with video, we have not come up with a good way to quote video…and link to a specific part of a video.
Blogger, Typepad, and the other big boys don’t even acknowledge videoblogs yet on their site. So we have a long way to go before we get the tools to easily remix each others videos…unless we build the tools ourselves.
err…actually, TypePad just teamed up with VideoEgg for enhancing videoblogging capabilities. You can read more about it here:
http://typepad.videoegg.com/faq.html
Or contact me if you have any questions.
I have one reason, and it’s simple. Some things can’t be solved with technology… and that’s when we solve them socially… But to chracterize mefeedia as a directory I think is to miss the point…. It’s about video sharing… it does however have a “directory” in it… but if I had my way I’d strike the whole idea of the directory completely from the media lexicon… it’s just about “finding video blogs”… Mefeedia is not a directory it’s a marketplace of IP, of ideas, of conversation… and yes, videos.