iTunes Eyes Video Blogging, but is the Vlog Ready for Prime Time?

Posted by Mac Harris Categories: Features, Internet, Movies, Podcasts

Video Blogging, or Vlogging, is quietly gaining momentum in the weblog community. For those of you not in-the-know, Vlogging is basically taking the idea of podcasts to the next level. A video broadcast (yes, people also call them vodcasts) is placed into an RSS/Atom enclosure and syndicated around the web in the same way a regular blog works.
 
Apple has suspiciously added a form of video blogging support to its latest iTunes iteration. This is the first corporate endorsement of the fad/trend/media-revolution that I’ve seen so far. One of the biggest hurdles to the success of Vlogging has been the complexity and difficulty of taking video clips and getting them onto the web quickly. Traditional DV Cams require capturing, editing, encoding, and uploading before a finished video clip is online and ready for distribution.  Webcams offer some relief but usually produce low quality video in tiny onscreen windows. The mobile aspect of blogging and photoblogging is another stymie for the video blog . In the U.S. today very few mobile devices offer decent video recording with the ability to upload or publish content to the web.
 
The issue of bandwidth is also a key to the success of the video blog. Traditional and photo blogs require very little bandwidth, as text and basic images are small in size.  Video files are comparatively massive, especially when you consider syndicating these videos all over the web. The bandwidth costs associated with running a videoblog are potentially exponential compared to a text-only we. 
 
Can video blogging displace TV news reporting? Will America be tuning in to bedroom versions of 60 Minutes on their PCs while televisions begin to collect dust? Could Google Video solve Vlogging’s bandwidth woes? Comment wars in 3,2,1…