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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

#121
post #112
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…

As someone that hates email and text messages I'd totally trade my time spent in meetings and writing or reading emails for watching and making videos. Searching within videos is a solved problem for Google.

>Searching within videos is a solved problem for Google.

Yeah, we'll just never get to use it.

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

#122
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…

Video tutorials can be good but YouTube's move to remove dislikes from videos made it impossible to figure out if the tutorial was good or waste of time.

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

#123
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…

What a "get off my lawn" take. I think you are entirely undervaluing having access to video tutorials on virtually any subject. A paragraph on the internet doesn't show you step by step visually how to do something. Short form video, if you haven't noticed, is absolutely dominating social media and google has good reason to bundle and theme it for the workplace.

I don't think using dominant social media practices as a proxy for "good" is the win you think it is.

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

#124
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…

What a "get off my lawn" take. I think you are entirely undervaluing having access to video tutorials on virtually any subject. A paragraph on the internet doesn't show you step by step visually how to do something. Short form video, if you haven't noticed, is absolutely dominating social media and google has good reason to bundle and theme it for the workplace.

Can't believe you missed the chance to reply with a "Hot Take" video and instead opted for the old school 'Type in some text like a Grandpa' approach

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

#125
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…

Videos are not as information dense as text - both because people talk slower than they read and because authors are forced to spend more time planning and editing. The difference between Loom and Tiktok is Looms don't have to compete for an audience (they are required to watch in order to do their job) which means they are orders of magnitude less carefully made.

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

#126
post #12
post #4

My prediction on this: people will create videos, people will stop attending meeting because "I'll just watch the video offline", people will get crunched and not watch the videos before finally re-scheduling meetings where the authors will step-by-step in the videos and present the content as we used to do with slides.

This is not the point of meetings though. Meetings are for Aligning Stakeholders or Collaborating Across Teams at least in my world. Do you regularly attend meetings to be an audience member?

I try not to be one of those people, but when I'm in a meeting with 20 people and only 3 are actively contributing it sure seems like some/many are doing just that. Any non-dev in a standup typically mentions how many meetings they went to yesterday, and will attend today, as if this is some badge of productivity - and I say this as a manager myself, someone who attends a lot of meetings!

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

#127
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…

>> Slides suck ass to communicate ideas,

Slides are not, and should not, be the primary medium for communicating information. They're a skeleton to hang together a presentation, set tone and context, and anchor your ideas. If they are information dense you need to be very, very careful; typically it's a sign of failure when they're too dense.

I love a good presentation, a well designed deck that compliments a presenter who knows their stuff and has (gasp!) practiced... I can't stand bad slide decks and have no tolerance for the lazy garbage that is the majority.

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

#128
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…

> Who in their right mind would think that video could be a productivity tool!?

Unless it's a fiendish plot to sell LLMs to prepare summaries of the videos. I'm at Google Next 24 and today's keynotes were pretty much AI from start to finish.

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

#130
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…

What a "get off my lawn" take. I think you are entirely undervaluing having access to video tutorials on virtually any subject. A paragraph on the internet doesn't show you step by step visually how to do something. Short form video, if you haven't noticed, is absolutely dominating social media and google has good reason to bundle and theme it for the workplace.

> paragraph on the internet doesn't show you step by step visually how to do something.

It does, images existed long before YouTube, and plenty of tutorials used them

Social media domination is usually associated with less productivity, so that's a negative factor

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