Confessions of an Online Video Luddite

comScore says that consumers are watching 3.4 hours of online video per month as of December 2007, a report highlighted in this post on Silicon Alley Insider. That’s a 34% increase in time spent viewing since January 2007. Apparently we’re enjoying online videos more than ever.

Except me. I’m not a fan of online videos. Three reasons:

1. Too long for the videos to load
2. If I get impatient and start the video immediately, I get annoying latency
3. Investing 2, 3, …10 minutes of my time is too much

#3 is the one that gets me most. After waiting for the load time or enduring the pauses in the video as it loads slowly, the payoff better be good for my time. And generally, it isn’t. I’m not talking watching episodes of Lost on my iPod. Rather, I’m referring to these home-built efforts. They just aren’t worth the effort.

The comScore survey indicates that average online video duration is 2.8 minutes. The shorter time for the videos makes sense. Longer videos will exacerbate the issues above.

Reading, on the other hand, is a great experience. With RSS, I can pretty quickly size up the article and determine how much time I care to invest in it. I learn more in 10 minutes of reading/scanning my RSS reader than I do with 10 minutes spent on videos.