Some Thoughts On My Own Video Viewing Habits (clearly not a mainstream viewer)
Video is trying to take away my time from the computer, or TV. There are a few shows I watch on TV (good wife, parenthood, happy endings — SO FUNNY, modern family, new girl, dexter, breaking bad). Online, I don’t watch much video — I watch business panels, talks, chats.
I am a huge music guy, but don’t watch music videos really. Video requires my full attention. Audio music lets me multi-task. Turntable.fm lets me listen to music, show off music to people and hopefully be a trendsetter (see this quote from mark hendrickson’s plancast post-mortem), and socialize/chat/make friends. When I watch a movie or TV show offline, it’s not intrinsically social. In the middle of plays in a sports game, I socialize with friends about what just happened. After a show, I socialize with my wife or friends about what we just saw… but not really during it.
Like I read twitter, facebook, instagram, and foursquare to keep up with what my friends are doing… I’d love to know more about what they are watching… I THINK. Some of my friend’s music tastes overlap with mine, but it’s a fraction of all of them. I imagine video would overlap more with entire population, so what are those videos? Some friends post things to Facebook, but sometimes I don’t have 10 mins to watch… nor do I want to watch for 3mins here, etc. It takes a lot for me to click play on a 4min video while looking at Facebook.
I guess what I’m saying is I wish I had a queued up list of popular stuff that friends liked, commented on, and obviously shared. Personally I’d watch it while I’m on the elliptical. But so far, I don’t have a comfortable method of watching online video with the wife…. I suppose I need a boxee or something.
Would kind of be neat if there was a TV show, or a queue, that was the 30 best [or most popular] minutes of video online. Or 20 minutes. Something that everyone in the world should be watching, and is the start of a conversation amongst people. When I see friends, TV shows get mentioned and we comment on “yeah, wasn’t it so funny when in Big Bang Theory this past week they were making highschool jokes about Settlers of Catan — ‘wood’”, etc. If there was 20 minutes of must-see video each day that the social pressures of peers talking about all the time, basically made it required viewing for me, then I’d be watching. Til then, I’ll catch the ‘double rainbow’ or ‘sexy sax man’ videos when I hear enough people talking about them or a friend skype’s me a link to it and I’m able to invest a few minutes to watch it (and tell my friend they are crazy, or tell all my friends they must see this video too).
