Is Video the Future of the Web ? Yes

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Is this the future of the web? Very possibly. Google's aquisition of YouTube in late 2006 shocked many webmasters into thinking Video. Some for the first time went to YouTube to see what all the fuss was about - and found a microcosm of search itself - search for something like you would a search engine and find hundreds of results, and... yes... all video. It's still early in the life cycle - so like the early days of the web with brochureware and static content, these early videos are homespun amateur productions that don't rest easy on the eye or ears. This will change with the widespread adoption in economically strong countries of broadband technology and it's technical improvement even across broad geographical areas. Even so - the pioneers get the bows and arrows, settlers get the land - too early an adoption could be counter productive. It might start just as small videos as extra options options on websites, but as video technology becomes more intelligent more can be done, such as clicking items appearing, areas of the screen, etc.

The dangers?
You could rush in too quickly before your audience is ready. The dominance of video on a site may just be too subject to a young, hip audience and put off the traditional customer base you need. The video quality needs to be high - not related to the typical quality of most video components of YouTube of late 2006. Professional videos used selectively could be the way to embark on the video course. A studio? It may go that way and a two tier web result from it, where, like the literal Mall, only highly professional stores survive. What may emerge are easy ways to produce videos that are highly polished professionally produced components. But amateur productions need to be avoided and are an obvious danger to the survival of a web site in the video future. There is also a danger of rushing in and spamming the search engines with keyphrase rich tags to return the video content highly, which may also be counter productive.

Optimising?
The search engines will have to find a better way to search video to return appropriate SERPs. This could be done through tags associated with the video if the SE's are not to actually get into the video code itself. Contextual text could provide the clue the search masters need to make decisions. An early indication of this in late 2006 is the tool by Google to have people tag images as they find across the web - all this is usable technology for returning appropriate results to searchers.

How to Prepare?
Don't rush to make your site a video site - no-one really knows the exact shape of the future. But to get some videos uploaded to YouTube or similar sites (MySpace, etc) will prepare you for what changes will be wise in the future. Keeping up with technology is possible for non-techies when it's done as-it-comes. Who knows how many web studios will exist in the mid term future.

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