There’s an interesting story in The New York Times last week that covers the ways video portals like Hulu, Netflix, HBO Go and others are trying to improve their search functionality. As the article states, video search has…we’ll say “lagged”… and made it hard for people to find what they’re looking for. So most of the big companies have relied on recommendations – either those built into the system (“You enjoyed X, how about Y”) or from friends – instead of search to drive views and usage.
But the “Why?” behind people’s searching behaviors has changed significantly.
Specifically people are no longer searching for media just to watch, but to use in their online conversations. Just this morning I was searching Google Images and YouTube for a Chasing Amy quote to use as a response to a co-worker. So if someone is looking for a specific moment from, say, “Lost,” they want that specific moment. They want that quote from Sawyer to use as a sarcastic response to their friend. They want that particular moment from Ghostbusters. That particular moment from Mean Girls.
That means the onus is on the video hubs to make sure that not only their search feature is working well but that their content is tagged and categorized effectively and efficiently with actor names, character names, setting (“classroom,” “hotel” etc), key quotes and more.
This is actually a big change and speaks more to how we’re redefining what counts as “language.” GIFs are language because they’re being used to express an opinion or emotion. Videos are language because they’re being used to exrpress an opinion or emotion. Media, in short, has been co-opted as language.
Right now people are taking their own screengrabs and pulling clips off home video and uploading them to YouTube or Giphy or Imgur or wherever. It would be great it these media portals – as well as the owners of the intellectual property – would get on the bandwagon and realize it was better for them in the long run to have an official version of these moments available AND give people the tools to customize them by adding text and such. Instead of site after site that let you customize some sort of goofy avatar, how about a tool where a movie studio or TV network made a wide collection of GIFs available that people could add some text to and then share on the social network of their choice?
(Later update: TechCrunch has a story on Giphy where it sounds like the company is trying to do exactly the kind of thing I’m talking about, working with content owners to get official assets while at the same time giving the average user the tools to customize those images for their own purposes.)
Language is evolving faster than the gatekeepers can keep up. That’s also true in the recent news that the Oxford English Dictionary has bestowed its blessing on “hoverboard,” adding it to what amounts to its list of official words. Anyone who has seen Back to the Future Part II has been using “hoverboard” as a word for 26 years now, without the OED’s consent. It is a word and always has been since that word, that collection of letters from the alphabet, has shared meaning between the speaker and the listener.
So the language has evolved. Now the tools that we rely on to convey that language need to catch up.
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