Happy Friday! Welcome to Issue 8 of Rerun, your weekly digest of digital storytelling, interactive media and the future of TV curated by Axonista.
This week YouTube had its 10th anniversary. A lot has changed in video in those 10 years, with increasing HD, mobile viewing and 360 degree immersive experiences becoming part of the video landscape. Video has never been as accessible, mutable, immediate and shareable as it is right now, helped by recent trends towards live streaming and autoplay. We're excited at what the next 10 years will bring!
Speaking of the next 10 years, how do we start designing for virtual reality? There's a lot to think about, and this week's Top Pick by Matt Sundstrom (@mattink) is excellent food for thought.
Top Pick
Designing for VR: Learning to let go of the screen
TV, computers, mobile phones, tablets, watches; the majority of digital design over the past few decades has been for a flat rectangular screen. However we're starting to see the emergence of virtual and augmented reality devices, which will likely shape our digital experiences over the next few decades. When you take away that small flat rectangle you're left with familiar concepts like a horizon, peripheral vision, focus, distance, perspective—and yet when it comes to UI design these are entirely unfamiliar.
For example we currently have the concept of responsive design, where a web page or UI adapts to different screen sizes. But how does an immersive UI adapt to concepts like distance? Height? Speed? Brightness? Darkness?
This is a fantastic read, well written and well illustrated. Easily this week's Top Pick!
Features
Marketers, here's how to not suck at streaming
If you listen carefully you can just about hear a background hum from agencies around the world talking about live streaming apps like Periscope and Meerkat. It's still early days for those platforms—just ask Madonna—but they present an exciting new opportunity for marketers and content creators. How do you make the most of it? This article from Jeff Rosenblum (@JRQuestus) of Questus has 5 excellent principles for livestreaming success.
Like it or not, autoplay video won
“The Internet started as a newspaper, but now it’s turning into TV.”
Autoplaying videos on the web aren't a recent development, but nowadays publishers are doing them in a much more streamlined and smart way. Videos play silently and are often part of the content, nested within a well designed editorial or feed rather than cast out in a sidebar. They'll often seamlessly transition to another video after ending and recognise when the reader is trying to engage with the clip. It means a better experience for readers and also more accurate view metrics for publishers.
Facebook users are notching 4 billion video views a day
Speaking of autoplay, Facebook are now racking up 4 billion video views every single day. That's up from around 1 billion views a day just six months ago. This can be attributed largely to the fact that videos in the news feed now autoplay silently, counting as a 'view' after just 3 seconds.
Analysts love to compare view metrics between Facebook and YouTube, but in reality it's apples and oranges. YouTube requires the user to actually engage with the content, Facebook doesn't. Nevertheless, big numbers getting bigger!
YouTube at 10: The archive of now
Over the past 10 years YouTube has become an invaluable tool for journalists like Mark Little (@marklittlenews). The ability for eyewitnesses to quickly take and upload videos means that events of importance have never been so well recorded. Reporters have an endless stream of content at the tips of their fingers that they must verify, manage and contextualise.
But who is archiving these clips that could disappear from YouTube at any time? Also like any popular communication tool it has been a force of good and bad, of truth and propaganda, of transparency and manipulation. What do the next 10 years bring?
Channel 4 will 'shut down' E4 on UK Election Day
E4, one of the most popular youth TV channels in the UK, will shut down from 7am to 7pm on UK Election Day in a bid to encourage its viewers to get up off the couch and get to a polling station. Whether it'll work or its viewers will simply switch to another channel—or device—is up for debate, but it's believed to be a UK first and it's an interesting move in what has been a very video-driven election campaign.
This animated timelapse of the New York City skyline is amazing
Visitors to the new 1 World Trade Center who take the elevator up to the observatory will be treated to a different kind of view along the way. Rather than staring at an empty wall they'll be immersed in an animated timelapse showing the development of New York City from the year 1500 up to the present day. It even includes the scaffolding and construction of the building itself! We wonder if it goes backwards in time on the way back down...
Happy Friday!