Momentshowing

Schlomo brought up a memory.

Communication. That’s what he was doing. If you go through his
archives, you will see him around his house (smoking weed), on the job
(smoking weed), and driving around town (smoking weed). Collectively
though, you also learn about his estranged relationship with his father
(divorced; unaccepting of Anti’s lifestyle) and the sorts of friends
Anti has. Really great stuff. Really Human Stuff.

If you weren’t around for Anti’s daily videos, check out his adandoned blog with broken links.
You got to remember that there was no Youtube back in 2005.
We were just figuring out how to be ourselves online. 
Here’s a rare video that still exists:

As I said back in May of that year…

"His videos are often times 10 minutes long.
You are just sitting with him.
He knows you’re there and talks to you.
It has absolutely no "value".
There is no "point".
And his work is…. "priceless".

The big craze currently are the content companies rushing to put their TV shows on the web.
iTunes, Yahoo Music Engine, MTV, CBS….they all are creating ways for you to pay to download the shows you can already watch on TV.
This is an obvious sell.
You like it on TV, then you’ll like it on the web.
This doesn’t change much of anything except a company’s revenue AND their ability to survive these fast-moving times. It’s a smart move.
If I want to watch the 152nd episode of Seinfeld right now, I should be able to…and I’ll pay a buck or two for this convenience. Though if they don’t offer the service, people just find what they want elsewhere. (DON’T MAKE PEOPLE PIRATES!!! TAKE THEIR MONEY DUMMIES!!!)

Enter videoblogging. Almost 2 years old and growing.
Josh Leo was recently on Michigan public radio to discuss his work.
HERE is a link to the 4 minute story.
Josh is so clear in his intent and vision for putting his videos on the web.
"This is my life and I want to share it with you".
(this is my life)

The reporter does a good job putting videoblogging in perspective. She captures the passion Josh has for creating his own media…and the passion people have for watching it.
More of us are craving feeling, some unmediated communication, and the power that comes when you know that what you see is not illusion or manipulated.
It’s funny when we get so cynical that we make fun of personal videoblogging as being "naive".

I like TV because it lets me turn off my brain. It takes me away.
When I was 12, my folks gave me their old 12" black and white TV for my room.
I was in heaven. I was a TV baby.
I got into Videoblogging because I was going nuts with the rift between what I saw on TV and what I experienced and knew to be true in the real world. I can only be numb for so long. Since traditional media wasn’t offering a bigger buffet table, we started cooking our own meals.

Videoblogging as practiced by Josh Leo is the revolution.
His videos will never rival the audience of CSI…though there is nothing technically that would stop him from having an audience that big. But when there are a million Josh Leo’s around the globe with their small audiences….then you have something.

It’s not about the eyeballs they attact or CPM’s…it’s about the ideas that will flow across the globe through direct video publishing and distribution.
It’s the effect and influence. Pull your head out.

Just as text blogs have changed the way newspapers/cable news report on issues by becoming fact-checkers and offering competing conversations…videoblogs will follow a similar path.
But whereas text is dependent that you can read the language, video can cross many more of the invisible cultural and geographic boundaries because you can SEE what is happening.
And unlike TV, a huge global archive of video is already being created that will keep our great-great-grand kids closer to understanding what we were like.

Anyway, there will be videoblogs that aim to rival TV entertainment and make money doing it.
There are text blogs that make a lot of money.
Anyone can now make an extremely popular "show" and distribute it globally. The sustainable business model is still being sought. Good news.

But you can also just pick up a camera and say something…and see if anyone feels the same way.
The army of ants has arrived.

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.