The World of Video Blogging

Just as people have settled comfortably into maintaining their text-based blogs, along comes video blogging to expand the medium yet again. Now there is a dimension that can be achieved that goes beyond the static blogs of text and photographs. Videos add vivid life to the information and opinion presented on a blog, thus creating a bridge between the once separate worlds of text and film.

With a video blog entry, the primary means of communication is the video itself rather than the written word, although text will label or augment what the viewer sees, and can certainly be used within the video itself. But in many respects, this type of blog works the same as one that is mainly text-based. It is viewable on a regular blog page, will be updated regularly, and still involves the creator choosing what information or opinions to convey. Much of the structure on the website is also the same, with viewers given space for comments and interaction.

If people are wary of trying video blogging themselves because they lack experience, then they need not worry. In the same way that hosting sites created software for text-based blogs, there is now blogging software designed explicitly to show you how to make video blogs as well. A blogger can take the raw footage they've captured with their cameras or other equipment, and the software helps them edit it down to a useful length, which is usually 1-3 minutes, plus add sound, music, text and titles. Then the edited clip can easily be uploaded.

Creating a video blog still isn't as easy as a text-based blog however, so people also need to be aware of some potential downsides to setting up a blog for this type of medium. Just capturing and storing the clips requires many resources. The camera equipment needs to be good enough to create video that won't embarrass the creator (or, for that matter, the viewers). Presumably the blogger will want to retain a copy of anything that is uploaded to the blog, and that will require storage space.

And since video files are not small, they may create a conflict between the blogger and their internet service provider. Just uploading these clips takes a lot of bandwidth, and some ISPs object to this high demand on their networks and subsequently put limits on people's bandwidth usage. A blogger may be restricted, therefore, by what broadband connections are available and affordable.

The door has now opened, however, and will not be shut again. Video blogging is here to stay. Students use this sort of blog for classroom projects, and many teachers have begun using a blog with video clips in their own teaching. In the personal and business realm, many bloggers have created a video blog as a sort of personal portfolio, even substituting it for a resume. With the immediacy provided by video, blog creators and their viewers are communicating more deeply than was previously possible.

Related topics about video blogging
Finding Top Blogs On Any Topic
In addition to Technorati, with its general Top 100 list, or its lists for individual topics, sites like Wikio perform similarly. For example, under Wikio's "Top blogs – Politics" category, you might again see the Huffington Post at the top. Each blog below has an up or down arrow that shows whether it's trending upward or downward.

Can A Blog Help A Business?
Businesses do need to be cautious about raising customers' expectations, however. While an almost one-on-one relationship might be possible between a small business and its customers, larger companies may not be able to respond to all queries or complaints, and this could damage its reputation if it's not careful.

Lost Blogs And Data, Lost History
On a smaller scale, blogs themselves are constantly vanishing, as people move them to new servers, start new ones, or simply stop updating altogether. Members of a blogging community, having no other way of knowing the person, lose touch and may never discover what happened to their friend. The blog posts sit there until the host site archives them or deletes them for inactivity, and the person is gone from online history.