The latest, latest trend on Web 2.0 (I bet people will soon start calling it “web 2.1″ really seems to be launching video-capable sites for everything. Social networks where you don’t type - you record yourself trying to look funny.
The last “video social network” I’ve been through is vator.tv - a place for users to “present your business ideas in video”. And since not everybody is an natural born entrepreneur, come standout jobs - a job posting site where the jobs are posted as small video clips. The good thing: they seem to be attracting a lot of users. The bad thing: I don’t think many people actually DO watch more than a couple of the videos, simply because they don’t have the time for it or they get too bored after the first one. Like I did.
Human eyes can quickly scan things they see - that’s a fact. That’s why text is such a good thing: you can get a glimpse of a big amount of data just by fast reading through it, and will (probably) still be able to catch the most interesting items. But if you’re forced to watch VIDEOS (or listen to audio ads), either you simply discard a lot of the entries just by their first frame (”hm, this guy looks too shy… this one is too japanese… hey, this one is speaking from a shark pool, that’s cool - I’ll watch this one”). Which will make it a lot more likely for you to discard the data you were actually looking for than if you were just going through plain text.
Some other websites for unconventional media such as Slideshare offer a text transcript of the content along with the entries, so you know that powerpoint presentation with some unreadable text over a red background is actually about the evolution of advertising, and that one with an orange on the first page doesn’t contain any text (so it must be a slideshow of orange photography, or whatever. But video? You can’t really “get the pitch” from videos without watching them. Not automatically. At least not yet. Hmm, I smell startup…
Another point of concern here is that nerds don’t usually do well in front of a camera. And having to make jokes in front of one to apply for a job that will never actually need that kind of acting sure feels awkward. The Standout Job guys themselves look quite uncomfortable on their own ad. But maybe they don’t think so. Maybe they feel like the Brad Pitts or Edward Nortons of IT - just like most videobloggers out there who think their voices are nice (they usually aren’t) and those rehearsed jokes they say sound funny at all (they generally don’t).
All this talk gives me yet another great idea for a startup: a company that adds sign language to videos, so that deaf people can know what’s going on - and hopefully can apply for jobs or “read” blogs again, when the “video revolution” makes this the only way to read job postings. Yay!
Ben Yoskovitz on June 10th, 2007 at 8:05 pm says:
Thanks for commenting on Standout Jobs, I appreciate it. The debate & discussion re: video is an interesting one, certainly one that will continue for some time.
I can’t speak for Fred, but I certainly didn’t feel like Brad Pitt or Ed Norton on camera. I was a bit stiff and uncomfortable, but we were rushing and it was the first time. You get better with practice…
Standout Jobs has released some video job ads but there’s more to the story than that, we’ll be doing a heck of a lot more in the Fall. I do think video has a strong place for companies to present their stories. You might get bored after a couple videos, but you might also find something that really sticks.
And I don’t need you to watch 1,000 videos for the idea to work, I need you to watch a couple that you think will be interesting and then pursue a relationship with the hiring company after that.
Fred Ngo on June 17th, 2007 at 6:00 am says:
Yes… you’ve uncovered my secret… I’ve always wanted to be a star… and now I *is* one!!1!
Thanks for stopping by Standout Jobs, Herval. I can’t wait till you see what we’re really offering come Fall…