video blogging

Video blogging seems to be exploding across the blogosphere. On one hand, it gives your readers a face and voice to go with a writing style, and I also believe that it makes things more personal. There are (at least) three downsides to it, though, from what I can tell.

The first is accessibility. Although I believe that most web users now have high-speed internet, not everyone does, and I have always followed the belief that you play to the lowest common denominator, in my web design and everything else technology-related.

The second problem is the loss of anonymity. Unless you're inclined to wear a Zorro (or Batman) mask, you're immediately exposing your identity to the world. I don't know about you, but the last thing I need is someone recognizing me at a grocery store, and assaulting me because they disagreed with one of my rants.

The third problem that I see behind it is copyright and ownership. Few people have the hosting space to store daily video feeds, and many people end up using sites like Youtube. Problem is...most of these sites require that you sign an agreement when you create an account that basically gives them a non-exclusive right to do what they want wit the content you store on their site. So these videos that you make today, could be archived somewhere and taken our of context or used in a way that you never intended at a future date.

So in a nutshell, video blogging is cool if you don't mind inevitably waiving some of your rights, sort-of like living in the United States I suppose.

I may try and post a video just to try it out...