Will Video Kill Text on The Internet?
By Anna Johnson on April 8th, 2009When video fans tell me that Internet users have increasingly short attention spans, I tell them that’s precisely why there will always be a place for text on the Internet. Text, unlike video and audio, is ideal for scanning.
The fact that text can be scanned much more easily and quickly than video and audio, is not, however, the only reason why text will remain a key part of the Internet. Even as audio, and especially video, become more popular on the Internet, text will still be essential for sign-posting and describing that audio and video content.
No, video will NOT kill text on the Internet.
After all, without text to guide us in navigating all the audio or video on the Internet, we’ll be back in the days of analogue television. Back then, television programming was pushed on us, and aside from reading (printed) television guides and seeing the networks’ promos, we had little power to decide what we watched, or when or how we wanted to watch it.
Another reason for text to stick around is that there are still plenty of content providers who want to provide, and content consumers who want to read, text.
Whether it’s in the form of an academic journal, a tweet on Twitter, or a blog post, text is still the medium of choice for a lot of people. Some ideas are better conveyed by text. Plus, text content is still easier and faster to create for a lot of people.
Also, as production values increase and expectations about the quality of online video increase, so too will the degree to which some content providers and consumers be put OFF producing or consuming amateurish videos. Better to produce a top quality written piece than a terrible video that ends up undermining the message, right?
Don’t get me wrong. There are PLENTY of reasons why video production and consumption will continue to become a bigger – and perhaps even a dominant – part of the Internet. I certainly believe that the Internet will end up becoming a major, if not the, distribution vehicle for at-home video entertainment.
But what I love about the Internet is the fact that it is a MULTI-media medium. It facilitates communication in all but the in-person form. It’s text, audio, video, interactive, real-time, and more.
So while the percentage of Internet communications that constitute one form or another may change, there is no reason for any of them to disappear. Not while they continue to be useful to content creators, distributors and providers alike.
