Asymmetrical Information

you don't even have an economics degree! you're a blustering poser!

Please don't start making videos. Why would I want to listen to someone talk at 100-150 wpm when I can read at 300+ wpm, and skim when I want?

AT hits it. I *hate* internet video, except occasional music videos or really funny video which aren't as funny as stills or text (like the "I hate Pachelbel's Canon" guy).

Aside from the speed, it's a lot easier to read some text, put it down, and come back later. It's almost impossible to skim video (especially internet video). Text is just more user-friendly for those things which can be rendered in text.

vloging would be fine so long as the written content doesn't suffer.

One nice thing about audio and video is that I can skim or read something else while I'm listening. Audio is good for the lighter (and heavier) personal stuff. The voice carries a lot of information. But for the more analytical and technical, written is much better. It always nice to see your face too.

Oh, comments aren't working at Freeexchange.

Again, I'm not paying to download 1/8 of a song. Yeah, I'd pay more for rights management free downloads, if I could get a quality download for the same price or less than a CD. But now the downloads cost more than a CD, the quality is less, and they want a premium on top of that.

But now the downloads cost more than a CD, the quality is less, and they want a premium on top of that.

The downloads are actually much, much cheaper than a CD if you only want a few of the songs. And only wanting a few of the songs is one of the main excuses people give for pirating music instead of buying CDs.

And it's not 1/8 of a song. 128 kbps is about 1/5 the size of losslessly compressed audio, and you get sharply diminishing marginal returns from higher bit rates. Anyway, EMI is moving to 256 kbps. Very few people can tell the difference between that and a CD.

Thanks for the pachelbel's canon clip. Hadn't seen it yet -- it's pretty funny.

for our benefit? paternalism finally rears its ugly head on AI ;)

considering all the econ fanboy comments you inspire, aren't you teasing with the threat of webcam? just a bit?

Mean Mr. Mustard was playing in my head while I read the post, perhaps Vlogging would be better.

I also hate internet video. I frequently skip stories when there is not a print version available. Video is not the best medium for everything.

I'm not sure vlogging's going to catch - the telegenic gene, after all, is thinly distributed among the population. By that, I should note, I mean more than mere looks; there's a certain comfortable stage presence that it requires. After watching the recent Althouse/Franke-Ruta dustup on YouTube, I found myself less inclined to read either blog than I had been before: the merits of their relative positions aside, they were two people who seemed spectacularly unsuited to the medium, and they were personally unimpressive, albeit in very different ways. The people who seem to do well as vloggers are not, as a general rule, the best bloggers: Michelle Malkin, for example, has the stage act down, but I don't generally like her writing.

Exception: Glenn Reynolds. Clearly a Nietzschian ubermensch if ever there was one. That guy does EVERYTHING well.

"Glenn Reynolds. Clearly a Nietzschian ubermensch if ever there was one. That guy does EVERYTHING well"

while being almost always wrong...

while being almost always wrong...

See? He's even good at inspiring helpless babbling in his detractors. The guy's amazing.

Oh, god. Sometimes I wish we could go back to 1999 bandwidth, just to kill Internet video.

I wonder what it would be like if the comments to a "vlog" were video as well. Ugh. There's a reason I haven't owned a TV in 15 years.

I read blogs because I like to read intelligent discourse.

I agree with the other posters who appreciate the ability to skim, and quickly return to text content, without messing around with slow, bandnwidth-hogging browser video plug-ins that never seem to work right under Linux.

Of course, if an attactive, intelligent, economist elf woman were to vlog, I'd have to watch.

Put something on video, and the odds of me clicking on it went down by half. If I click it, odds are maybe half again that I will watch the whole thing through.

Odds of me going back to it again to find some interesting factoid or piece of information....still greater than zero, but not by a lot.

You'll find, I think, that a lot of employers are blocking Youtube these days - too much virus and NSFW potential. That will probably only make a dent in the stuff that's bread-and-butter (read: amateur you-know-what), but it makes it a far less appealing place for political and intellectual stuff, since work hours are prime time for that kind of thing.

All I know is that I won't watch vlogs.

Waste of time, compared to text. I read faster than people speak, and watching them adds no information I care about.

I mean, watching Megan would in itself be pleasant, I suppose, but not enough to make it worthwhile to watch a vlog.

Hell, I don't even listen to podcasts, for the same reason. Takes more time, requires audio and thus quiet surroundings where nobody else cares about the audio, and more and different attention. That never happens when I'm reading blogs, so...

(I don't watch speeches, either. Transcripts are far more useful, as long as they're accurate.)

While I certainly enjoy reading the posts, a certain amount of vlogging might not go amiss. As Sigivald says, "watching Megan would in itself be pleasant"...the porcelain features, alabaster skin, emerald eyes, raven hair...accompanied by the (doubtless) dulcet, bell-like tones of her sultry voice as she reads her favorite poetry...

...what?

I like to listen to music while watching television while reading blogs and doing other stuff (working on documents on the computer).

Vblogging is just annoying, and vanity. If you want people to see you, be attractive, or have something really powerful to say, or, again, be really really attractive (in a naked, huge boobs kind of way).

I don't even like pictures in blogs, (being on dialup) but have adapted to that well enough, and despite my suspicions that they are used as blog filler.

I'm also convinced that people who read (or can make themselves read) are the people who control the world. For example, toddlers, they don't read. They watch Teletubbies, and have utterly no power. And far too many Vbloggers are like Teletubbies in people bodies.

I don't even listen to podcasts, for the same reason. Takes more time, requires audio and thus quiet surroundings where nobody else cares about the audio, and more and different attention.

I save up a few that look to be interesting and burn them onto a disc, then pop the disc in the CD player the next time I have a long car trip. Kind of like having NPR available, but with relevancy.