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With Vids, Google thinks it has the next big productivity tool for work

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Re: With Vids, Google thinks it has the next big productivity tool for work

#91
post #55

I absolutely LOATH it when people post a video instead of a document or deck (except in cases when they need to demo something) because they essentially offload the work onto the audience. Obviously there are exceptions, but in general writing an update requires the author plan what they want to communicate. In my experience, off-the-cuff Loom videos are often rambling and verbose, and leave it to the viewer to synth…

I agree with this. My company started pushing these types of short videos more and they have not been popular, at least with my peers.

On the creator side it takes an awful lot of time to create a clear and concise video, especially for people who are much more used to writing docs than creating videos of themselves.

Videos are a terrible medium for the audience, at least for any technical and referenceable material. They aren't searchable and are much slower to consume than text. Old videos almost never get watched, whereas some older documents get read often.

Re: With Vids, Google thinks it has the next big productivity tool for work

#92

I've always been skeptical of generative AI being used to make slides. I like the idea of it, and maybe someday we will get there. But right now, they all feel like they are trying to fully automate the process where what I really want them to do is automate the tedious parts, co-piloting with me. Because what ends up happening is I need a high degree of precision and I have a very concrete idea of what I need to pre…

They are automating the parts you want to work on to replace you. The AI is there to be trained until the your part can be eliminated.

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Re: With Vids, Google thinks it has the next big productivity tool for work

#93
post #88

One of my worst nightmares, using videos to convey information. It was bad enough with this wave of YouTube “guides” that take eight minutes to explain something which could have been done in a paragraph. Videos are also the worst searchable medium, really looking forward to having to scan through hours of content to find “that thing I saw six months ago”. Who in their right mind would think that video could be a pro…

> One of my worst nightmares, using videos to convey information.

I mean videos can be great for educational content. But the putting out a video takes significantly longer than watching it. And theoretically you could make it just as searchable as anything else.

The problem is that people suck at communicating clearly and concisely already, add to that a narcissist guy who likes to see himself talk and you got a recipe for a major pain in the..

I am afraid the same people who really like to record voice messages will flock to this like moths to a lightbulb.

Re: With Vids, Google thinks it has the next big productivity tool for work

#94
post #53

As an alternative to slides it might work well, but both are terrible formats for reference material (anything where you need to extract a quick piece of information). The shift to having to mine YouTube videos for much of the world's specialized knowledge is a shame, and Google makes it worse every day with how they prioritize search results.

I run a local Tube Archivist mirror and having live, predictable full-text search of descriptions, transcripts, and user comments has been a breath of fresh air (it's backed by ElasticSearch, so you can go full-contact if needed). I appreciate YouTube's official search for its accessibility, speed, and spooky "it knew what I meant" ability, but it's a tragedy that this is the only supported way to search their library. I consider YouTube's archive a wonder of the world, and it's a shame that it is locked behind an engagement-polluted interface.

Re: With Vids, Google thinks it has the next big productivity tool for work

#96

It's odd to me that they wanted to make a whole new "app" for this, rather than building in some sort of timeline into slides. Powerpoint supports automatically transitioning slides and auto playing video, so with some fancy magic in the export where they slice the video for each slide, you could even do everything in a "compatible" way. Slides would of course be able to keep the video on top of the slides + transiti…

Probably like what happened with Google Inbox... It's a greenfield canvas to try a lot of innovations, see which ones people use, then shut down the product and add these popular features to Gmail, or in this instance, Slides.

Re: With Vids, Google thinks it has the next big productivity tool for work

#97
post #39

I am sooo interested in this because I think loom is one of the best and most useful products for communicating knowledge. Especially in remote companies. But it’s not interactive! I want to be able for people to add and insert videos, and for me to insert responses or keep building a video based on what people asked. I’m surprised by the skepticism here. Slides suck ass to communicate ideas, and text is just not eno…

The skepticism is also driven by Google's track record of killing products and generally lacking a long-term or stable roadmap of product lines (with very few giant exceptions).

Re: With Vids, Google thinks it has the next big productivity tool for work

#98
post #88

One of my worst nightmares, using videos to convey information. It was bad enough with this wave of YouTube “guides” that take eight minutes to explain something which could have been done in a paragraph. Videos are also the worst searchable medium, really looking forward to having to scan through hours of content to find “that thing I saw six months ago”. Who in their right mind would think that video could be a pro…

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Re: With Vids, Google thinks it has the next big productivity tool for work

#99
post #88

One of my worst nightmares, using videos to convey information. It was bad enough with this wave of YouTube “guides” that take eight minutes to explain something which could have been done in a paragraph. Videos are also the worst searchable medium, really looking forward to having to scan through hours of content to find “that thing I saw six months ago”. Who in their right mind would think that video could be a pro…

IMO it's because literacy rates are in the toilet.
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