Found in Wired: Blogging + Video = Vlogging. You know I hate blogging on blogging, but it’s got to be done.

If you read my blog, this blog, you will notice a specific tone. It’s a very self-serving site. Though I’m an expert in web and personal technology, a former journalist and enthusiast of wine, beer, food, movies, music and everything in between, this blog focuses on none of that. It, instead, is my place to rant, rave, babble and toss off ideas that, in the sober light of introspective time, I probably would have kept to myself were it not for the ease in which blogs make it to publish. In other words, my blog is like 90% of the blogs out there - self-serving, vanity crap.

This is not to say that blogs are useless. O’Reilly has taken the format and used it to promote genuinely interesting new technologies and techniques that further support its core tech publishing business. And sites like Engadget and Seth Godin’s blog target very specific niches (cool gadgets and new-wave marketing, respectively) that are underserved or in hot demand. Blogs can - and should - be used to promote companies, new books and movies and folks looking for work (exmaples: The Long Tail Blog and the Freakonomics Blog). Still, these kinds of sites only make up 10-20 percent of the entire Blogosphere. The rest is, mostly, self-serving dreck.

The same is true, in my opinion, for podcasts - the hip term given to audio blogs. I typically stumble across a blog either when someone recommends it to me or I find it during a Google search. So far, not a single person has been able to recommend a podcast to me and Google, as of this moment, is not able to search through a podcast for content. The few podcasts that I’ve listened to have either been so amateurish as to be too painful to listen to (filled with bad pops and squeals, containing rambling content that takes too long to get to the point - guess what, kettle - or featuring speakers who could really, really benefit from sitting in on a Toastmasters meeting or two) or filled with the kind of childish commentary that reminds me of why I don’t listen to Howard Stern. In fact, the only podcast I listen to with any regularity is Science Friday, which is actually broadcast nationwide on NPR and, thus, isn’t *technically* a podcast in the strictest sense of the term.

It’s for these reasons that I’ve resisted doing a podcast of my own. It’s difficult to justify the time and effort considering the number of podcasts already out there in the world. I’ve toyed with the idea of doing a “Two minutes with Rob Z.” segment once a week or so, but I wonder how useful or interesting anyone would find that. My ego, while large, isn’t exactly big enough to warrant that. Hypocrisy being what it is, though, you’ll probably see such a thing on here in the next few weeks since the idea is still sitting and germinating in my mind.

So, to find out that, in addition to vanity web sites and audio programs, we can expect a new wave of vanity video to hit us, I’m less than enthused. Video is a notoriously fickle medium. Nothing in the world is more boring than spending 30 minutes watching a talking head blabber on, which is why news broadcasts pepper their footage with explosions, dead bodies and constantly changing camera angles. Video is an appalingly poor way to get textual content across - it’s really better suited to what you may call “experiential” content - that which you must see to believe. Up to this point, the most popular “vlogs” have been of the adult variety. That should give you some idea.

Now, folks living extraordinary lives in which the moving pictures are stunning and awe-inspiring should most definitely hop onto this bandwagon. But I doubt that too many jet fighter pilots and race car drivers have either the time or the resources to create a constantly updated vlog. Better to upload such videos as part of an overall site that contains other such content. I do think there will be a market for instructional-style vlogs, though. For example, I toyed briefly with the idea of doing a web-based cooking show shot in my own kitchen. Done with the right attitude and personality, I think I could have the makings of an online hit.

The reality, however, is that many folks will simply take their content and, as they have done with podcasts, transfer it to this new medium rather than expand on it to match the medium’s capabilities. Both podcasts and video blogs would be enhanced by adding interviews, on-the-scene reporting and the sort of textures and touches that separate the amateur from the professional. If you’re a podcaster, do yourself a favor and listen to NPR news or your local radio talk station. Many reports feature music and environmental noises in the background (i.e. a report on fruit pickers in the field may feature the sounds of footsteps on soil or scythes cutting through stalks) that add a texture that brings the listener closer to what is being reported. In the case of video, reporters often appear “on the scene” even if nothing is really happening in the background, again to bring the viewer closer to the story.

All of this is a long, self-serving way of saying “Please don’t podcast or video blog just for the sake of doing it.” Give it some thought. Put the time and effort into it. Vlogging may be the next big thing, but it may not be the right thing if most of your content consists of, say, paragraph after paragraph of rambling about the state of blogs. Your message is not going to be improved by using a new technology - you should use the new technology to improve your message.