Why is social media headed toward vertical video?
Earlier this week a news story started circulating about Twitter creating some kind of Snapchat Stories clone, and that got me thinking--why is this happening?
My hypothesis is that vertical user-generated is a great vehicle for video advertising. For users, vertical videos from your friends, on mobile, is a very compelling media form. We know this because of the rapid user growth seen in Snapchat's first few years and Instagram Stories' incredible user growth as well.
But we also know that video commands the highest CPMs, a term used in the advertising industry to gauge the price of an ad. And if you have users in an environment where they're consuming vertical video linearly, there's an opportunity to insert a full-screen video ad without significant user drop-off.
This synergy between users and advertisers is right where mainstream social media services want to be. They sell advertising, and right now that advertising (in the feeds of Twitter and Facebook) is great for conversion--getting someone to buy something--but not really great for brand advertising (think Nike or Coke).
Steem is so fascinating to me because it creates an environment a whole new set of incentives. If you create something that a lot of people find useful or generates a big discussion, you and your audience will be rewarded. A good example of a media form being devalued by the internet is photography. There are so few ways to make money doing photography, and yet it's everywhere. Even people who enjoy photography don't have effective ways to support good photographers. On Steemit, a community of photo enthusiasts can have a community that rewards high quality work and discussion.
So while the rest of social media is collapsing in on vertical video, Steemit is expanding outward into new niches and more defined products. This will in turn reward users for contributing to narrow content categories they actually like instead of trying compete with the platform at large, which is what we've seen on YouTube. For example, on YouTube there's no real reward for fostering a New York City vlogging community. On Steem that could totally work.
Camera: Panasonic G7
Microphone: Rode VideoMicro
Wide-Angle Adapter: Sony VCL-HG0758
