With the massive increase in online video, I wasn’t surprised to see a story on mediapost.com saying it is the fastest growing medium in the world.
The story cited a new report from social media research consultancy Trendstream and research firm Lightspeed, giving stats such as:
- In one week in January, 97 million Americans viewed a streaming clip online – as many as are tuning into any major broadcast network
- With 72 per cent of U.S. web users watching clips online, web video outstrips both blogging and social networking, and is now the leading “social-media platform”
- With 49 million active Web users – 32 per cent – uploading content in January 2009, users of all ages now generate far more content than traditional broadcasters and collectively contribute the majority of video content to the web
Meanwhile the world’s most popular video-sharing site, YouTube had a 1,700 per cent jump in mobile video uploads over the past six months.
YouTube has shown phenomenal growth over the past few years. In mid-2007, six hours of video were uploaded to YouTube every minute. Now, 20 hours of video are uploaded to YouTube every minute. In fact, as I write this blog “uploaded youtube” is a trending topic on Twitter.
In my hometown of Yellowknife I have seen the growth of online video. Here are a few businesses that prominently feature online video. Let me know what I am missing:
- CBC North – runs its full Northbeat news show as well as numerous shorter news videos
- Kellett Communications – offers full gamut of filmmaking and effects, strives to make communication interactive, weave it in and out of all media, especially online content
- Up Here – this magazine about the north posts photos animated Ken Burn’s style with music/voice over track such as this recent soundslide, which is hosted on Up Here’s Vimeo channel
You can check out the Yellowknife tab on my Netvibes page to see other Yellowknife videos on YouTube.
I remember back in the days of my first photojournalism job at the (now defunct) Nanaimo Times I would spend hours a week in a darkroom, working with toxic chemicals to process photos for the next edition. Now with the advent of new media, not only do I not have to inhale fixer (or try to wash the smell from my hands), but I can add other multimedia elements to my photography projects. Recently I have been working with the Adobe application After Effects, and using the Ken Burn’s Effect to animate still photos to sound in order to tell old stories in a new way.
One journalist using these new tools to great advantage is Globe and Mail photographer John Lehmann, who uses a mix of uses of video, stills, soundcape and interviews in stories ranging from the tragic, such as Man Behind the Log, about a homeless soapstone carver sleeping on the beach, to the more lighthearted, such as Barely Bowling, with its look at nude bowling nights.
Magnum photographer Jonas Bendiksen uses stills and soundscapes/interviews to tell the stories of slumdwellers in Caracas, Mumbai, Nairobi, and Jakarta in The Places We Live, which also has book and exhibition components. The website excels at transitions – from scenes of the outside slum (with accompanying city noise) – to the inside, family stories, told in their voices.
But it isn’t the death of ’static’ photography online. One of the web’s most interesting photo sites is Boston.com’s Big Picture, which showcases the best photos from the news wires for display in a large-format (990 pixels wide) photo blog, with the pictures placed vertically for ease of viewing. Simple yet brilliant.
A recent twitter post by kk that linked to the 2008 Greek riots got me hooked on this site’s large-scale format – these amazing photos need to run this large to capture the drama of the events there.
