What am I searching for?
December 9th, 2004I’ve been made aware of the recent appearance of rss enclosure aware (read: can find video, audio, etc) search engines from the recent Wired article Video Feeds Follow Podcasting. Currently we’ve got feedster.tv and Blogdigger.
I went to their sites and was presented with a search box. I am stuck on what I would want to search for. Searching the web is straightforward – I’m trying to find out about some particular topic. Will people do the same with video? Will I search Feedster or Blogdigger to find out about George Washington in video form?
I am suspecting not. Video is a medium which passively engages people. Whereas people are actively searching for particular things on the web, videos are usually brought to our attention through someone else. RSS/Atom seem to be the web version of video bring us content passively. This seems to work with all forms of content as well – web, audio, video, etc.
However, once you start processing video or audio content, things change. While it is passive (this does not mean non-participatory) it is time consuming. Audio/Video is being funnelled into you and thats about all you can handle. For example, I can’t listen to the latest trade secrets and browse the web (at least I’m not that good at multitasking). The other big difference is that I can’t skim video/audio content. I find this extremely frustrating as I skim just about everything to read.
All this to say that I think search engines are great when you’re actively engaging yourself in the web, looking for a particular bit of information. However, I don’t think that that works for video. Can someone show me otherwise? But maybe this depends on what type of content we are going to see. Maybe there will be micro-documentaries of George Washington that I could run across, who knows.
December 9th, 2004 at 12:47 pm
I think where this comes in handy is searching for a particular video.
For instance, a while back I saw the really neat Lego music video for The White Stripes’ song “Fell in Love with a Girl”. Definitely the coolest music video ever.
Skip ahead a couple months. I’m hanging out with some friends and remember the video. I immediately want to show them. I search Google and can’t find it. Most of the results were ABOUT the video, instead of actually BEING the video.
I eventually found it, but I think that’s where something like this could shine. Instead of returning information about where to buy a CD, or a review of the album or the music video, it just gives me what I want: the video.
The other potential use is for TiVo-ers, or wannabe TiVo-ers. You forget to record something on your TiVo (or you don’t have one). What do you do? Find it online.
Bringing this back to your George Washington example, will you search for George Washington? I don’t think so. But in searching for information about him, you may come across a reference to a certain video, and that will be a prime candidate for video searching.
This does assume it’s done well, of course (a big assumption).
December 9th, 2004 at 1:12 pm
Good points. The interaction modality with video is much, much different than with text. What we are hoping is that media search will leverage the nature of blogs, which is close to real-time content. Bloggers are constantly linking and posting, mainly images, but audio and video as well, of current events. We’re gathering this information in close to real time, so it’s a good way to find it. A perfect example: I heard about the Pacers/Pistons fight on the way into work. When I got in, a quick Blogdigger search (I was privy to an advance release
) brought up the video instantly.
Matt’s example is good as well; there are video files that I occasionally get the hankering to see again, and these tools will help to find them – particularly if time has gone by and the original has disappeared, but reappeared elsewhere.
There’s some more examples that I can think of, like looking for other non-searchable media that discusses your non-searchable media (think podcasters referenceing other podcasters).
Regardless, your points about video being different are spot on; it is something to take into consideration. Thanks!