Commentary
Video Can't Migrate Off the Desktop Fast Enough for Me
- by Steve Smith , Staff Writer @popeyesm, August 4, 2010
There is a rumor floated by the media gossip site Gawker that Wired magazine and its editor Chris Anderson are poised to run a cover story declaring that the "Web is Dead." The murderer? Apparently mobile platforms and their apps. If the rumor is true (and I hope it is), then expect a lively debate in which defenders of the inevitable dominance of the Web start sounding like old fogies bolstering a digital media status quo. It will be fun and weird to see.
Personally, I have been waiting for this migration of content off of the Desktop to occur since the late 1990s. I think that for most of the interactive activities that we are passionately tied to, from social networking to video snacking and even to email triaging, the desk is among the most uncomfortable locations in which to consumer content we have invented. The Desktop Web as a content delivery vehicle is the bastard child of the office PC that the engineers and marketing dweebs of IBM foisted on us years ago. The modern PC or Mac operating system, cluttered with distractions and open windows is not conducive to immersion in much of anything, I contend.
eMarketer mobile analyst Noah Elkin just projected that by 2014 the share of mobile phone users who watch mobile video will climb from a 23.9 million this year generating $548 million in revenue to 56.7 million in 2014 producing $1.3 billion.
Elkin cites the move to higher quality devices and networks as well as the separation of content from carrier control as accelerants in this adoption. The free ad-supported model will drive much of the revenue growth, but both pay-per-view and subscription models will more than double.
Can't happen fast enough for me and good riddance to the Desktop. Let me use myself as a focus group of one. With both Netflix and hulu plus now humming across my TV, iPad and (for hulu) iPhone, I will be damned if I am going to lean back at my desk to watch a film on TV episode on my PC. In the last weeks and months I have watched multiples more content from both of these media sources on my off-Desktop devices than I have on the PC. The point is not that the Web is totally unpalatable as a long form video consumption device, but having these much more comfortable alternatives makes the Desktop environment simply a last resort. Right now I use the Web interfaces mainly to manage my account and queue of content.
The same behavior, a preference for watching video content in a more relaxed off-desk mode, is starting to inform my choices with other media. I like the clips that HuffPo and Daily Beast aggregate, so I save the experience for my evening iPad/iPhone browsing via their apps. I probably watch more CNN news video on my iPhone than on the Web. And the video browsing experience in the AMC iPhone app is so good I would just as soon use mobile to watch those Mad Men extras.
Maybe it's just me and the pent up frustration of spending a decade and half watching rich media experiences try to squeeze their way onto an interface and environment that was designed for spreadsheets and word processing. If media content is going to migrate from the desktop apps and post-desk devices it can't happen soon enough for me. In twenty years I would love to look back on the desktop, the Windows and Apple OSes and the damn browser window as all interim technologies, a holding maneuver in the digital revolution, before better ideas came along.
Steve Smith is Editorial Director of Events for MediaPost
Interesting piece, Steve.
I can't help but wonder, however, if we aren't making arbitrary distinctions that hurt more than help.
Is the "mobile web" really different than the "desktop web" or is it just a different way of accessing "the web"?
Same goes for video consumption. If I'm watching 30 Rock, in my livingroom, on a 42" screen, we'd all be comfortable saying that "I'm watching TV."( say it like the Old Spice guy, just for for).
But when you switch boxes, and your HTPC puts that show on the same screen, am I really no longer watching TV? Now I'm a "leaning forward, engaged user"? Hardly.
Same for mobile. When I plug my phone into my TV via HDMI, I'd hardly consider myself part of the mobile web. I'm still sitting on my sofa, watching on a 42" screen. Isn't that still "watching TV"?
We need to shift the conversation to better describe the activity and environment in which we consume media, rather than have the little black box in the middle decide what we call it.
iToys are iDeal for consumption of Content. PPG requires more horsepower, memory, processing speed, thermal control, ambient lighting for color processing, time for thoughtful/artistic development.
So the basic divide is "Am I a Content Consumer or a Professional Content Producer"?
Very insiteful. How do you feel Youtube's current deal with WMG to disable video content from playing on mobile devices which contain music even remotely controlled by WMG , even if they're legitimately
licensed from record companies & publishing companies play into this,
Especially for content providers like myself?
Typo on prior post . . . PPG should be PGC. Sorry!
Love the proposed headline from Wired. Didn't the artist once-again-known-as-Prince declare the internet dead a few months ago? As a premium content producer, I'll take any screen available. But as a content consumer - Avatar or Transformers on a 4-inch screen? - you may be a video vacuum cleaner Steve, but you're not a videophile.
@Corey
your points, as always are well taken. To the content distributor and producer, it is all IP, or it will be. Yeah, it is still the Web. But I really do think that these post-desktop devices use interfaces and enforce on publishers design discipline that the Web has been absent on the web or impractical on the Web. And yet the fact that it is IP even on these devices still gives me choice and interactivity I didn't have in the classic lean-back analog days.
Not so fast. People at work will still want to multi-task (aka goof off) with the web on their computer. They are already staring at one glowing rectangle: Why drag in a smaller screen?