Tweet of the week
This one made me laugh out loud:
Just made my son lunch. He wants Hod Gog. Thank goodness I speak two year old!
@Tiphers2
Tiffany Antoun
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Web video and content abundance
Video is driving the web right now, but you already knew that. Check out this post that contains 101 very current facts about online video.
Here are the highlights that relate to the amount of video consumed online:
- Average video length online is 5:01 minutes
- Average person is watching 816 minutes of video per month
- 20% percent click away inside the first 10 seconds
- 33% have left by 30 seconds
- 44% have left by 1 minute
- over 60% have left by 2 minutes
- May of 2010 144 million viewers watch 101 videos each on average on YouTube alone
Let’s break that down a bit.
Any video you produce that is longer than 5 minutes is effectively longer than normal. You must have better than ‘normal’ content if you are asking viewers to give you more than 5 minutes.
If the average is 816 minutes and you are asking people to go to your internet campus that is more than an hour long each week, you are asking them to give you somewhere on the order of 30 percent of their attention for the month just to that. That’s a big ask.
When you look at the dropout data of users clicking away from your video it’s clear that your video must be remarkable in the first 10 seconds and any video longer than 2 min. must be exceedingly good or remarkable to keep the majority of people’s interest.
Although an older piece of data, the average viewer watching 100 videos a month on YouTube is probably continuing to climb at an exponential rate. In light of that consumption rate how much content is your church putting on YouTube?
In light of this data, what do you see happening with video on the web in the coming years?
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Tim Schraeder | Cultivate Conference
You may have noticed that I’m a little stoked about the cultivate conference. It’s very unique in that it will touch on some of the big vision and cutting edge conversations that are happening right now in terms of communicating in and for the Church. Most gatherings that feature “new media” or “social media” conversations tend to just lump it all together into technology and serve up some 101 level content. Cultivate will be different.
Check out Tim on Twitter and at his blog.
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127 Defining Moments. What’s yours?
A few months ago I was sent a link to a that ran in conjunction with the film 127 hours. You know, the film about the guy who had to cut his own arm off in order to get out from under a boulder.
So I submitted in nature which was a blog post from a while back. .
Long story short I won, or at least I was one of 10 winners and I scored a Camel Pack, a down jacket and a massive case of Larabars that we are still working through.
Do you have a defining moment? Do you have a near death experience?
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Dictators and Pastors or Revolutions and Revivals
This is less of a blog post and more of a mind dump…feel free to try and read it.
I saw a talk by Clay Shirky at SXSW Interactive this year that was mind blowing for me in terms of pulling together lots of ideas I have into a detailed breakdown of the revolution in Egypt. In case you were living under a rock the last few months you know that the Egyptian dictator was overthrown by the people of that country and the catalytic tools of web, social media and SMS were the factor that finally made it possible.
I believe there is some correlation between the revolution in Egypt (and now happening in several other states led by dictators) and the potential for revival in the ‘C’hurch. There is also some correlation between dictators and pastors in terms of their roles. I freely admit that as a pastor many of my decisions are clouded by my desire to keep my job and I think I can speak for every pastor I have ever met when I say that.
**UPDATE** SXSW Released the Audio
Clay Shirky at SXSWi
The first thing Clay did was draw up a history of what media has done throughout history starting with Tyndale and his printing of the Bible. The bishop of London bought up the entire first run of Tyndale’s printed Bible so that they could be destroyed. He was afraid if this content being available to everyone. The side effect was that this gave a guarantee to Tyndale that the entire print run would sell and that allowed him to continue on.
Shirky then said:
“Abundant media can escape the hold of organizations that have significant control of scarcity….It wasn’t the existence of the Bibles that frightened the Catholic church it was the potential abundance of them that frightened them.”
And he continued:
“Even a powerful organization armed with the tools of both censorship and propaganda actually can’t do as well, in cases where it is faced with abundant media, as when it controls scarcity”
The average church, and in turn the ‘C’hurch, has control of content scarcity in that the content creators (pastors) are few in number and dwell in an expert class that presides over a pfeifdom who merely consumes that content. I believe that the average church member would love to be part of shaping the community of their church much more than they do and outside of there being more channels for communication most, like the people of Egypt, will continue to feel like they are all alone in their thoughts and ideas and never take action because they don’t believe they have the platform to distribute content that reflects their ideas and personality.
We are on the brink of seeing all this change in the church and it will be because of the open access to media that we will see a revival of some kind in our generation in the Church.
“The printing press did not cause the Protestant reformation…but it would not have been possible without the printing press. Social media did not cause the revolution in Egypt but it would not have been possible without it.”
I’m excited for what is coming and I hope that as a leader I am ready to lead in this knew reality. This could however be a painful time for leaders who are unwilling to adapt and open up the channels of content based on scarcity and allow for a peaceful transfer of power.
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