Why is video so prevalent in social media nowadays? Often information has to be condensed to fit the time allowed and it makes it more difficult to follow rather than text
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Maybe partially because it’s more visually engaging and easier to grab people’s attention with
We’re still suffering from Facebooks lies a decade ago about “pivot to video”. Facebook basically just lied about how much video people were consuming so that they could sell more ads. Marketers took it as gospel and it became self-fulfilling.
Video game walkthroughs are the main culprit for me. I just want a guide I can ctrl+f, find what I need and be done. I don’t need your shitty intros, shitty microphones, shitty voices, shitty everything!
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A big part of it ties back to this: [Facebook falsified video metrics](https://slate.com/technology/2018/10/facebook-online-video-pivot-metrics-false.html) and many news organizations and other groups pivoted to video. For some reason, even after the truth came out, nobody pivoted back.
Video game walkthroughs are the main culprit for me. I just want a guide I can ctrl+f, find what I need and be done. I don’t need your shitty intros, shitty microphones, shitty voices, shitty everything!
Views.
If I write
“Today I ran to the store, I bought a carrot, whipped cream and chocolate chips, then I got home, cut the carrot into tiny chunks, tossed them in cinnamon, sugar, 3 grams of MSG, 2 grams of salt, and a healthy pinch of Sriracha sauce. Then, melted the chocolate chips into a slurry and blended in the whipped cream, then Intossed it in an air fryer for 2 minutes and tossed the seasoned carrot chunks in for another 30 seconds and made this delicious treat that tastes like heaven”
You could read it once, slowly and get all thr information, additionally you child screen shot it, and I’d have 1 view.
If that was a 20 second video showing me scanning carrots, whipped cream and chocolate chips at a checkout for 3 seconds, 2 seconds of chopping carrots, 3 seconds of tossing carrots in a bowl of spices, and a red sauce, 2 seconds of melting chocolate and throwing whipped cream in the bowl, 2 seconds in the air fryer, a quick cut of carrots going in the air fryer, then 8 seconds of me eating a tasty spoonful dancing and smiling at the camera, You can’t follow the recipe, you know those components make something I seem to enjoy. If you want to recreate it you either need to watch my video back a dozen times to get all the steps, guess at the ingredients, and then experiment OR if I’m an influencer the video got your attention and if you want to know more youncanncome to my website.
Boom, I have 6 views in the video, and website traffic.
Then consider people are lazy and reading is hard, you may not even click on an article about my wicked spicy carrot cream, but if it’s a video that shows up in your feed it may hold your attention and drive you to action.
The Ad companies get more information when you watch a video compared to reading.
The Content providers make more money when you watch a video over reading an article.
The same reason the vidoes are 10+ minutes long when it could have been 15 seconds.
There are other reasons but usually $$$$ that is what ultimately determines it.
We’re still suffering from Facebooks lies a decade ago about “pivot to video”. Facebook basically just lied about how much video people were consuming so that they could sell more ads. Marketers took it as gospel and it became self-fulfilling.
Chiming in here with speculation that it’s a combination of a few things. First, people are getting shorter and shorter attention spans from using smartphones, which I think is how a majority of people consume information. Why take the time to read text on a small screen that requires your full attention when you can start a video with the same information and do “xyz” if you get bored during it?
Second, I have no source on this, but logically, most people are creating these videos/documents in order to get popular on social media, get money, or both. Advertisers pump more money into video ads and it’s easier to add an “organic, realistic, from the heart” ad to a video than it is over text, meaning video content could be more valuable to produce (or maybe it’s just more valuable to produce because everyone watches videos over text now like OP pointed out).
Lastly, I want to blame the more recent explosion of video consumption on tik tok. I think it has become popular enough to define how an entire generation consumes and interacts with media, which feeds into point 2 on which content is valuable.
Again, I’m not an expert here, just speculation. I’m personally a huge text person, I find it much more difficult/irritating/time consuming/etc to get info from a video and do not get why people would prefer that in a vacuum.
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