The future of Content...is Six Seconds.
As a non-millennial, former member of the so-called mainstream media, I remember a time when a video could run more than a minute without setting off attention deficit related expressions of alarm. But those days are gone….at least for the foreseeable future. And that’s not necessarily a bad thing.
I recently sat down with Chee Yoon, the CEO of Virect, a San Francisco-based startup that connects firms that need content with production companies all over the world. Soon was looking for input from content creators on how to fill demand for super short video ads. (In millennial-speak, super short is code for in seconds flat.) Yoon seemed to believe that the shorter the narrative, the easier it would be to produce. I have a different opinion.
And so, apparently, does the founder of Vine, Dom Hoffman. (This video has a LOT of bad language. So you've been warned.)
Here’s a clip from one of Vine’s brightest stars. Lele Pons, age 19, has 7 billion loops on Vine. She's one of the few internet personalities whose work I felt was not littered with overly offensive language and themes.
These videos are SO short and look SO simple. It’s not hard to undestand why Yoon believed they should be easier to produce but the opposite can be true. When you have plenty of time, it’s likely you’ll be able to get your point across eventually. But when every frame of video, every photo, every syllable uttered counts, each one becomes, well, precious.
But precious is not the point. Judging from the success of six second videos there seems to be incontrovertible evidence of the changing appetite of younger audiences. You’ve heard of Snapchat, of course. Well, it’s not for teens swapping photos they don’t want their parents to see anymore. With Live Stories, Snapchat may very well be the future of content. Last year Snapchat staffers started curating snaps submitted by users and patched the photos and videos together to create interactive stories. They now draw about 20 million pairs of Millenial eyeballs every day. Despite the shaky, out-of-focus, graininess of the images, the stories are compelling because they ARE interactive, transient and provide a glimpse at an event from someone else’s perspective, a perspective that becomes theirs. It drops them into the middle of the action. Its very appeal lies in its rejection of old-school ideals. Thoughtful, deliberately-paced narratives? Boring. Video that is in focus and not shaky? Old-school. Something you can watch over and again? Pointless. It is a new visual language created for a generation that is 21 and under. If you don’t get it, that’s kind of the point. But you will.