Interactive Video is dead. Long live the conversation

Interactive Video is dead. Long live the conversation

Posted 12/30/09

Dead, boring and pretty much meaningless.
Marketing folk often butcher the very terms they use to tell their story. Consumers just hear blah blah blah. That’s what happens when you don’t talk to your audience using language they would use themselves.

Welcome to the world of Interactive Video. This 20 year old term has ceased to convey any real meaning or value. Ironically today so-called “interactive” videos are more interruptive than interactive. We’ve had this feature since VHS/BetaMax. Remember the VHS version of board game Atmosphere? It seemed so cool at the time. The experience improved on switching to DVD, essentially users choose to jump to “clips” in a video - it’s a menu system by another name.

YouTube and Web-based video changed the game. With such a clear leader, other startups naturally sought to differentiate themselves from YouTube and interactivity was clearly a point of difference. Predictably YouTube then added interactivity only serving to suck any remaining meaning from an already hackneyed term.

Content delivery network’s, delivering large volumes of video, feature adverts to divert user’s attention from the video. The user isn’t in control and the video player continues on it’s predetermined path. Perhaps this should be called “interruptive video”. Hotspots alone are not interactive as they don’t change the content being delivered. They are diversionary distractions, just like Google ads.

If engagement is your goal and the viewer experience is your focus, you would create a very different set of features to engage the user in a conversation - real or simulated. It all depends if you want a passive or participatory experience. Are you trying to entertain or inform/educate your audience? Typically Consumer focused video is about entertainment and business video is about education, but this doesn’t mean business video can’t be about participation.

This is where we position “1:1 Conversational Video”.

For us, it’s about the content, making it engaging, creating a memorable/sticky experience and ensuring the viewer is participating. Simply delivering video is no longer the challenge; however, creating great content is. For businesses faced with need to create engaging content it should be a huge a subject of great focus and concern.

At HuStream we care about the user’s experience and giving them their fastest route to the most valuable information (an ROI for the user). Each user has different needs and will choose a different route through your content, creating their own story, their own conversation, unlike movies or regular linear video where the director is determining how the content will be consumed.

Businesses are constantly being advised to “use video” - fascinating in a world where everyone knows it’s about the content. It’s odd that precious few companies are telling you how to make engaging content. Thinking you have a competitive advantage simply because you use video today will probably be short-lived. Long term differentiation and sustainable competitive advantage will come from creating truly engaging content for your audience. To achieve this your must first get to know your audience.

Creating yet more content is dead boring and pretty much meaningless, if you don’t think about your audience and what they want from the experience. Now that’s a conversation worth having.

Posted by Nick Kellet