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The problem with Twitter’s new marketing campaign

Twitter’s new video ad actually explains what Twitter is for – Kurt Wagner, Recode

Twitter unveiled a new video ad Monday morning, and it does something that its previous TV commercial never did: It explains why you might want to use Twitter.

Here’s a look at the new ad, which Twitter is running on its own properties for now and will soon pay to distribute on other digital platforms:

“What’s happening in the world?” the narrator asks over video of Donald Trump campaigning and clips from “Game of Thrones.”

“What’s everyone talking about? How did it start? See what’s happening in the world right now.”

This is, in essence, why anyone uses Twitter. To answer these exact questions. And now Twitter is explaining that, or at least highlighting it, in a way that might catch people’s attention.

Twitter’s problem is that most of the time there’s nothing going on in the world that you need to know about RIGHT NOW. Osama Bin Laden isn’t being killed somewhere every second of the day.

Sports and celebrity gossip might be the exception. People don’t need to know that stuff right away, but they enjoy it. Is that enough to sustain Twitter?

Also, if someone has never used Twitter before, can they find what’s happening right now FAST, like right this second?

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Does watching video on 1.5+x speed make it better?

Apparently, watching video online at 1.5-2x is popular.

I’ve occasionally wondered whether that’s technically possible without requiring sophisticated software, but never gone further with it than wondering. After reading this article, I tried it with a short Mental Floss video and liked it.

I routinely listen to podcasts and audiobooks at 1.5x or so.

The ability to watch at high speed and scrub forward and backward is changing our relationship with TV, movies, and other video. Video becomes personal, like reading, says Jeff Guo at The Washington Post

Reading went through the same transition a thousand years ago, Guo says. Until then, reading was done with one person aloud to a group of a half-dozen others. People who could read to themselves silently were rare and remarkable. Monks who’d taken vows of silence were allowed to mumble while doing calligraphy, because mumbling was considered essential to reading.

I have found a new way to watch TV, and it changes everything

 

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Sideways

Vertical Video on the Small Screen? Not a Crime

Holding your phone “the wrong way” to shoot a video provokes surprisingly apoplectic reactions. Professional videographers tend to regard vertical videos as the mark of an amateur, and they react to these clips with the same sense of wounded outrage that snooty writers reserve for people who confuse its and it’s, or who type two spaces after a period when everyone knows there should only be one.

More and more, video is being viewed on phones rather than desktop web browsers or television, and on phones vertical video makes sense.

Also, vertical video makes sense when the subject is vertical. Like a person.

[Farhad Manjoo/The New York Times]

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Why Facebook And Mark Zuckerberg Went All In On Live Video

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… what’s hot now in social are raw, unfiltered windows into the lives of others.

Wasn’t this a trend around 2000? People mounted webcams in the corners of their houses and we got to watch them eat, poop, and have sex all day. Anybody remember JenniCam?

I expect the Mitch Stares Slack-Jawed at Screens for 10 Hours a Day channel to be a MEGA-HIT.

Soon to be followed by a spinoff: Jesus, How Old Are You And You Still Haven’t Learned To Chew With Your Mouth Closed?

Why Facebook And Mark Zuckerberg Went All In On Live Video [Mat Honan – BuzzFeed]