Getting into social video

I've been poking about the social video space of late and absorbing as many moving pixels as can be safely beamed at a pair of analog eye sockets without producing tissue damage, seizures, or abnormalities of the brain. It's an interesting space less for what companies are doing than for what it suggests they might do, but the signs are there. In terms of content, well I'm inspired to yank a line out of Hunter S Thompson's Fear and Loathing... "eyes glazed insanely behind tiny gold-rimmed greaser shades, screaming gibberish." That's Hunter at a traffic light in a state of mind. But it seems to apply to the cumulative experience of watching short video clips online at social video sites.

I've said before that I think YouTube is a social system in failure mode. That in a way, the video is a substitute for the blog post, presenting something about its poster that's neither expository nor opinion, but is in some way reveals the poster's personality and taste. That the video is in a way an "utterance." That's the only way it makes sense to think of YouTube as a talk system (to me, at least). But I really do think that's what makes it interesting. Short videos can function as a kind of sign system, or symbolic language perhaps. They're identifying, moreso than Flickr pics for example, because they use content as a reference. In the case of videos shot of the person posting, and by the person posting, they're obviously even more of an "utterance." Where blogging requires a person to say something interesting, the video says it for us. It's faster, its more easily consumed (perhaps), it's often more easily liked, and as a "linguistic" phrase it is is easily accepted. (How would you reject a person on the basis of their videos?)

If YouTube is social because it creates visibility for posters and involves a communication system in which videos are member contributions, statements or messages through which members identify themselves, then the similarities among different kinds of videos provide a quick route to group identities... The social on YouTube can then differentiate itself: videos have styles, contents, references, and so on. The popularity of comedy, music videos, and TV shows us that YouTube samples popular culture, and that members identify themselves through pop culture clips. We speak TV on YouTube.

What comes next then is where things will get interesting. As video players become richer, and as they embed chat, commenting, rating, lists, and forms of gestural communication and action within themselves (Joost, Click.tv, Clipsync are a few in this space; Jumpcut as an editor system, is communicative but not in the way I'm thinking about at the moment), the challenges of communicating through video, about video, and to other viewers (friends or anonymous) quickly complicates the user experience.

What social practices await us on the other side of video clips, channels, ratings, tags, and lists? Will we use our camphones to create group videos that we then annotate for group memories and video scrapbooks? Will we finally see what really happens in Vegas? Will we send each other video postcards? Will dating profiles link to clips of our stupid human tricks on YouTube? Or will new video intimacies and confessionals provide us with a much richer view of each other (Is that what we even want? Most online daters prefer to pique curiosity by telling about themselves in text form; video is too revealing, and is a direct and less-flattering way to present ourselves than the text profile, over which we have much more control!) What kinds of games will we play with each other through video?

Will social marketers be able to extract good preference data from our social video use? How will we solve the challenges of getting meta data from chats (which are notoriously poor at revealing what it is they are about, given as they are to directing attention among chatters, not what is chatted about)? Will users get together for synchronous video viewing, or does that just fly in the face of the time-shifting benefits of the medium in the first place? How will live social video allow members to manage their presence availability (as any IM tool does today)? How deeply can we become engaged in video content, and between typing, talking, pressing buttons, and turning on our own webcams, which mode or combination will win?

Interesting developments are certainly just around the corner. I would like to think that this time, the moving image might realize some of its educational potential (TV was hailed for its potential in democratizing and distributing knowledge -- think Marshall McLuhan or Ed Murrow in Goodnight and Good Luck). If content is king, the king this time is us.

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Some sociology on the coupling of social media and mass media

Reading Notes: Social Media, Mass Media PDF, 45 pages

The Reality of the Mass Media, by Niklas Luhmann, and Anthony Giddens' Modernity and Self Identity together provide a rich basis for unpacking how online media, and social media (user generated content) in particular, couple with the mass media. Each observes the other, further extending and enriching the content of news, advertising, and entertainment through the participation of members of the audience on blogs, content aggregators, social networking sites, and even on recent hits like Youtube. These reading notes are theoretical in tone and substance, and are intended for those interested in social interaction design, especially in how it maps to theories of mass media and a sociology of the media's construction of a reality reproduced daily by social media users.

Reading Notes: Social Media, Mass Media PDF, 45 pages

From the reading notes summary ...


Social Software Design Notes (SxD)

Reading Notes on Modernity and Self Identity by Anthony Giddens and The Reality of Mass Media by Niklas Luhmann

Summary
These reading notes describe a systems-theoretical view of mass media and web and social media that posits a) that users, regardless of their individual intentions and interests, engage mass media in form and in content, and that b) the social web extends the domain and reach of mass media while also presenting it real challenges, and c) that this exchange occurs through the social practices of online communication and interaction as well as through the structural and functional coupling (e.g. business) of web media and mass media. In short, the social web offers users a chance to communicate and interact around cultural narratives, news and events as told by the mass media, and more without themselves belonging to the mass media, and the mass media, by observing this user generated content, can inform itself and adjust accordingly. But the social web and the mass media are doing more than observing one another (blogs on movies, cited in newspapers or on TV, and so on): the very forms in which many new online phenomena (call them social media, social software, web 2.0, etc.) take shape implicitly, if not explicitly, refer to forms of mass media communication. In other words, the social practices users engage in refer as much to the mass media as to daily social interactions. This, if it were accurate, would offer an interesting view of social media, for it would suggest that people understand and can engage with the online world through the mass media world and can make the mass media their own. To suggest that users don't simply take what they do in every-day life and adapt it to the online world, but refer also to the how content is produced on the radio, on TV, in films, in advertising for examples of form and representation if not also narrative construction and distinctions between truth and fiction, truthfulness and falsehoods, would be to suggest that the way forward for social interaction design should involve merging direct and immediate communication interests of individuals with the indirect or mediated means of production of media's abstract forms.

The above thesis is constructed in these reading notes from the sociologies of Anthony Giddens and Niklas Luhmann. It offers a bridge from user-centric design to media theory and avoids the weak subject position common to many structuralist theories by suggesting that users put their understanding of the mass media to their own use. Mass media constructions of a world can equally serve individuals who, engaging in mediated communities and social interactions, need forms of representation with which to package their communication so that it can be understood by those who come across it. Unable to be there when communication occurs (online), users rely on the familiarity of packaging to provide context for their communication. Packaging provides the promise of control over the reception and interpretation of their communication. (Utterances uttered in face-to-face interactions don't serve users of online social media insofar was users can't be present online to utter the utterance in the presence of others in the first place.) And what better source of forms of presentation than the media, which invented the possibility of representational languages and systems in the first place? Media theory takes a functional view of mass media, claiming that the production of stories and events not only sustain business, industry, politics, law, and so on, but connect to consumers by producing news of interest to them. These reading notes suggest a view of new media that connects online and web media to mass media with the difference that users are involved in social practices that engage the Self in relations of trust and trust commitments. Seen from a business perspective, then, social media extend the fictions, and to some extent the functions, of realities constructed by mass media. This time, however, individual users are the systems' "producers," storytellers, journalists, and so on. Communication and interaction extend mass media distribution, and accelerate and extend the reproduction of news and events. Social media also contribute the truth and authenticity that belongs to interpersonal communication, and which can only be emulated by mass media.

Investigation
Social software systems vary in theme, or genre, as well as in their UI and design. Dating sites (match.com, eharmony.com) focus on personal information; their users are interested in people. Career networking sites (linkedin.com) focus on people also, but present the professional in the context of professional networks and histories. Both dating and career networking sites are thus biographical and representational. Myspace and Facebook also deal with people, but this time more actively than dating and career networking sites, for they not only capture social networks but produce them. In many ways they resemble interactive mass media: they're involved in creating social scenes, they spawn and promote bands, clubs, events, news, and so on. Blogging and discussion sites also engage in the creation of news, but this time emphasizing news, viewpoints, perspectives, and expertise more than member personality. There are recommendation sites and systems too, which tend to subordinate the biographical presentation of a person (e.g. personality and character) to the objects reviewed: books, movies, music, restaurants, web sites, travel, products, and so forth. All of these systems engage similar technologies, user interface techniques, and user practices. It seems highly likely that as users, our use of these sites is informed by our understanding not only of the genres of mass media programs, but also their means of production. In other words, we know something about how to present news, we get the difference between news and advertising, we know a lot about celebrities and why we're interested in them, what makes them popular, and how to talk about them. Social practices of social software use, in other words, are informed by existing mass media. But now we can participate in a world online that is coupled to the mass media through observation of it, at a minimum, and structurally, at a maximum (where social media are functionally, economically, and structurally coupled to the function, economics and structural organization of mass media). Mass media do not permit two-way communication with their audience; social media of course do. These reading notes cover two sociologists (Anthony Giddens and Niklas Luhmann), whose work can help us unpack the social practices emerging around social software and social media within a higher-level analysis of mass media (media theory).




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YouTube: videos are signs, watching is social

Marshall McLuhan, in Understanding Media, writes:

"What we are considering here, however, are the psychic and social consequences of the designs or patterns as they amplify or accelerate existing processes. For the 'message' of any medium or technology is the change of scale or pace or pattern that it introduces into human affairs."

To say that YouTube is not just video hosting or video watching is stating the obvious. The social participation YouTube gets in the video posting, commenting, rating, and circulating is what made it the killer app of hosted video. It is precisely YouTube's popularity that set it apart, and earned it the ability command a huge acquisition fee (read: head count. It was the audience head count, which to Google looked impressively like loyalty, and they may be right, which is why they'll leave it as YouTube for a while and keep their little "video NEW!" link sandwiched between images and news)...

I asked in a recent post what the content of YouTube is, using McLuhan's formula that a medium's content is a previous medium: "This fact, characteristic of all media, means that the 'content' of any medium is always another medium. The content of writing is speech, just as the written word is the content of print, and print is the content of the telegraph.” Then if the content of YouTube is television, its value was measured in terms of audience share (not advertising or programming quality). YouTube was clearly the biggest of the online video networks.

If the content of YouTube was television, but modified because it is online, then its formal content was television, its content as substance is viewers (users). And why is this so important? Because it would be a mistake to see YouTube in terms of its core value proposition: watching video. YouTube is a communication medium, and its real value lies in providing a marketplace "in" which people gather to pass around videos they like. "Watch this, you'll like it" is conversation. It's a statement, and YouTube is full of them. Look up Robin Williams and the first page of results are all the same 2 min and 19 second clip of Mr Williams doing a Scotsman inventing Golf. Why? Because posting is, as we learned from blogging, the fundamental act of communicating. Not reading. Not watching. (Not listening!)

This will all get more interesting as we look at the nature of utterances and communication involving video as reference. We need to compare YouTube and related phenomena to the blogosphere and to blogging. Ask yourself, what is it to refer to a cultural commodity or object, in a statement addressed to friends (or anonymously, to the world). What is that act? Is it a "look at this" act or is it a "look at me" act?

Or is it a "look at me looking at this" act? Let's suppose that the videos on YouTube are like commodities, and that they have the sign value that we associate with fast cars, exclusive brands, and other status symbols. I'm not suggesting of course that some YouTube videos better brands than others — videos aren't brands. I'm suggesting that videos signify social relations.

Videos on YouTube, because they are on YouTube, accrue social significance. That a person wants to share a video with somebody, be it by telling a friend or by posting, or by commenting, means that person likes it. And wants to communicate that like. In a "public" setting, identifying with a commodity carries social connotations. I'm into guitar rock. Or stand up. Check out these Bush out-takes. etc. Each video, in addition to its own content, has a reflective signification also: to like something is a reflection of my likes. The particular (video) makes a general reference (this is my taste). That's the social move. Association with videos can now become social, using the commodity form, as other commodities are social (the status symbols mentioned above). And they're free! Fast! And the consumption of them is ephemeral, and it doesn't oblige anyone to post one back, or to applaud, even to publicly agree.

The social works in online marketplaces like this by establishing a communicable interest between a user and his or her selections (books, videos, music, blogs, etc). If the interest were personal only, it wouldn't need to be communicable. It could just make sense to the person and end there. Its communicability is a sign that it's social. But in each medium, in each application (social software site, community, marketplace, etc) the site has to successfully create an audience/public, and successfully enable the linking of user to interests, and communication of these selections to individuals, groups, and the audience at large. One cannot really wait for the other. Hence the importance of viral marketing, and hence the advantage that has returned to first movers.

Our next investigation ought to be into the changing nature of sign value, of commodities as form and of our relations to each other through these mediators.


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Pay Attention to YouTube!

I'm on a bit of a Marshall McLuhan kick this week, with YouTube's acquisition to Google still in the air. And Kim Jong Il leaping up and down at the far eastern edge of the map: living, ridiculous proof that power is all about getting attention (Dumb and Dumber: starring Bush and Kim Jong Il). I don't think Robin Williams could've scripted a better skit; nor the South Park team have animated it any better than Kim did himself. Let's all pay attention to lonely wittle Kim Jong Il.

But back to our original news... YouTube. Why did Google take it when they had their own video service? Because Google's wasn't as popular. And why not? Because Google approached video as information. Youtube saw it as television.

This is not about videos, it's about television, and the future of television most importantly. Which will be why Sumner and Ballmer and Murdoch are still awake at night unsure of whether they just were too stingy. Marshall McLuhan claimed that television was a social medium. Film was not. YouTube is the present-day television, not television. YouTube, aptly named, since "You" (= My) and Tube (= Television) precisely describe television's reconfiguration in the Communication Age. Yes, and MyTube would've sounded a bit weird. But MyTube would've seemed a bit, well, narcissistic (ah, the truth about teenagers and MySpace is written in the name!). And it would've missed the function of Communication as it's applied to television. Since television is configured as a broadcast medium, it's reconfiguration is as a communication medium. MyTube would've missed the point. YouTube captures it: television communicates only if it's seen by others with whom one is communicating (namely, one's friends, or social network).

The social aspect of television is the reflection: to see others seeing what you're seeing. To share the experience of watching. Well, we don't often watch television that way any more. Sharing couches and armchairs, turned and tuned into the same network broadcast, primetime, dinner tray, dog splayed out on the floor thinking it's all about him. We live in a play-shifted, time-shifted day and age in which communication is as likely to happen asynchronously as it is to happen at all: that is, over the internet and not face to face. YouTube is about watching socially, but of course from one's own computer, out of synch in time, but in synch in terms of the content.

Google missed this because Google saw video as indexable, searchable, categorizable and taggable content. Flickr misses this because photos aren't social (they're a show and tell, which is a bit different because it takes the form of speaker/audience, not broadcast/audience). I watch you watching television. Television directs vision to itself but in the social context of watching together. There's always at least a peripheral perception of others watching (Not in film -- room's too dark. Social's not the point there. In fact movies open with a warning to turn off your cell phone. Most definitely not social...ah, but the experience is social, yes. But not the medium.).

The new generation doesn't sit down to watch prime time tv together. It's on YouTube, which provides the asynchronicity of experience, personaliz-ability of tags, uploading, favorites lists, channels, and a play duration much better suited to consumption than tv. Content in minutes, not half hour blocks. And played, of course, over the medium that's mine, that's mobile, that's interactive, and that's connected: the computer.

Google bought YouTube. Makes perfect sense.


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Marshall McLuhan on YouTube

There's a great scene in Woody Allen's Annie Hall in which Allen, overhearing a guy in line for a movie refer to Marshall McLuhan, produces McLuhan with the words "as a matter of fact, I have Marshall McLuhan right here." It's a hilarious bit of comedy. I can't produce McLuhan, but I did find him on YouTube.com. I looked for him on YouTube because I wanted to quote McLuhan's theory that every medium has a prior medium as its content. I've been thinking about which medium YouTube has as its prior content (more on this soon). To find McLuhan as content on YouTube, is, well, a bit Annie Hall... (sorry, it's not the *real* McLuhan but only a trailer for a History channel special... the comparison deepens... is the internet a parallel medium to tv? Is an actor playing mcluhan in a video on youtube about a television program about a man who said the content of television is theater a simulation of the real thing quoted in a communication medium or a message circulated in the mass media sampled by a consumer and posted to the mini media or a marketing ploy by the mass media or is it simply the content of my post? things get strange in the mediated world...)

So, which medium is the content of YouTube?

"The electric light is pure information. It is a medium without a message, as it were, unless it is used to spell out some verbal ad or name. This fact, characteristic of all media, means that the 'content' of any medium is always another medium. The content of writing is speech, just as the written word is the content of print, and print is the content of the telegraph." Understanding Media, p 8.





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