Three Factors for Web Video Success © 2006

I happened upon the Forbes magazine web site and noticed how they present video (the link on their current home page is shown here). Forbes (and others) present video on the web as I've imagined (and predicted) it for years.

There are three key factors that I believed would (and appear to be) play(ing) themselves out:

1) anyone can produce video (production costs are miniscule today compared to days gone by; this allows virtually anyone potentially to be able to create professional looking video; poor audio would offset good editing techniques)

2) video is the literature of our age [c'mon critics, help me support or walk away from this belief], and

3) Americans are used to the trade-off of "free" content subsidized by advertising.

I personally do not believe a business model that assumes web television viewers will pay $2 per episode of a television show. I can understand this model working in the short-term so that the number of internet television viwers remains limmited until the needed bandwidth is in place to support millions of computers simultaneously downloading or streaming video content.

Does anyone have a "consumption" index for video content? We assume from newspaper research that fewer and fewer people are reading the newspaper and more people are spending more time on the web. If there is research in which respondents were tested to see if they'd rather have a paper version of some form of information versus watching a video on the subject. An example that comes to my mind is a pamphlet such as those created by the American Cancer Society for newly diagnosed cancer patients. Would more patients prefer to view a video than read the pamphlet? (It would be possible to see the video at the medical facility and have a web address to view it at home via the Internet.)

Who are the brilliant minds that know what the future of video and print will be if we ever reach a new equilibrium. All I know is that I do not believe we are anywhere near that new plateau.

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You may use this content (better still, argue with me!), but please cite my ideas as © 2006, Dr. Bruce Klopfenstein. Find any typos! Don't smite me, let me know!