Video is getting a lot of attention on the web today and rightfully so. But what does this mean for the text-web (you know, information produced in plain-old written form)?

Some Internet analysts are predicting that video will dominate the web content within 5 years.

I don’t agree with that statement despite being very bullish on video web apps.

Video has a huge and growing place in media consumption. No big revelation. One testament to its growing influence on the web is Google Universal Search, which subtly integrates video (along with map, book, blog and image) content into traditional search results. But it’s simplistic to believe that anything produced in text today can be better consumed in video. The written word is and will remain the optimal form for a lot of content. Yes, the same news story can be transformed into news video. But the relevance of one over the other is a function of user needs.

For example, if I want to get the scoop on the latest acquisition of a web start-up by a bigger company, I’m going turn to text. I’ll probably scan the 3-4 most relevant articles to get the facts….who, what, when, how much and why. This is an active process defined by my desire to be very flexible in how I consume at the level of specific words, phrases, sentences and paragraphs. By contrast, if I’d much rather watch than read a transcript of the recent Planet Earth series by BBC, which features video footage of the earth and animals that has never been seen before. When you watch how animals migrate thousands of miles to avert starvation during dry seasons, you begin to understand the magnitude of this challenge in a way the written-word might not be expressive enough to communicate. There are many things that you just have to see, not read, to fully appreciate. In this case, video makes a lot more sense and is worth more than the proverbial thousand words. Before we go any further, it goes without saying that different scenarios are better supported by video, namely entertainment and content that is a byproduct of social communications/interactions.

A lot of this has to do with mood and intention. Does the user want to be active or passive. Sometimes, you want to sit back and just take in a lot information (or be entertained). Sometimes, you want more precise information flows that can’t be packaged as conveniently into video.

So what does this mean for developers of media-centric web apps? For starters, it means video is not the automatic ticket to the top of the charts. It’s a tool in the content arsenal and deploying it will vary from application to application. Here’s a good example of an early project where video has been integrated in a sensible manner — NaturalPath.com. As a alpha-tester of the site, which has been developed by a friend, I’ve noticed how text and video live in decent harmony with each other.

For example, I clicked on an article bubbled-up on the homepage titled “Good Eating Habits are Easy to Grow.” This is a 437-word article with punchy information including some bullet-points on tips for budding gardeners. In the sidebar for this page, related content appears, including an expert video titled “Connecting with Nature through Organic Foods.” Instead of directly loading the video, I landed on a page with an abstract, which I was able to scan in less than 10 seconds before launching the video within the page. In this case, the video was qualified by my browsing of traditional text content and that made a lot of sense. The same idea is demonstrating on a Cnet article about digital SLR’s where text is like a Splash page for the video content.

Bubbling back up a level, I would amend the big, bold statement by the Internet analyst to make it hit the mark. The web will become a highly visual medium. Visual does not mean video, but it does include it. Icons, still images and even some animation are all forms of visual communication that will be increasingly deployed to transform the web. Sitting in the middle of it all, however, will be the text-web.

It will be really exciting to see how the entire content toolkit and related accessories (e.g., images/icons) are brought to bear to get us to a different place five years out.

Filed under: Google, Search Technology, User Experiences, Web Apps

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Tags: Google Universal Search, Planet Earth, BBC, Natural Path, Internet Video, Written Word, Visual Communication,