Vlog


A video blog or video log, sometimes shortened to vlog, is a form of blog for which the medium is video, and is a form of web television. Vlog entries often combine embedded video with supporting text, images, and other metadata. Entries can be recorded in one take or cut into multiple parts. Vlog category is popular on the video-sharing platform YouTube.
In recent years, “vlogging” has spawned a large community on social media, becoming one of the most popular forms of digital entertainment. It is popularly believed that, alongside being entertaining, vlogs can deliver deep context through imagery as opposed to written blogs.
Video logs also often take advantage of web syndication to allow for the distribution of video over the Internet using either the RSS or Atom syndication formats, for automatic aggregation and playback on mobile devices and personal computers.

History

New York artist Nelson Sullivan was known for recording videos around New York City and South Carolina, in a vlog-like style back in the 1980s.
On January 2, 2000, Adam Kontras posted a video alongside a blog entry aimed at informing his friends and family of his cross-country move to Los Angeles in pursuit of show business, marking the first post on what would later become the longest-running video blog in history. In November of that year, Adrian Miles posted a video of changing text on a still image, coining the term vog to refer to his video blog. Filmmaker and musician Luuk Bouwman started in 2002 the now-defunct Tropisms.org site as a video diary of his post-college travels, one of the first sites to be called a vlog or videolog. In 2004, Steve Garfield launched his own video blog and declared that year "the year of the video blog".

YouTube

Vlogging saw a strong increase in popularity beginning in 2005. The most popular video sharing site, YouTube, was founded in February 2005. The site's co-founder Jawed Karim uploaded the first YouTube vlog clip Me at the zoo on his channel "jawed" in April 2005. The ordinary "everydayness" and "dry aesthetics" of Me at the zoo set the tone for the type of amateur vlogging content that would become typical of YouTube, especially among YouTubers. By July 2006, YouTube had become the fifth most popular web destination, with 100million videos viewed daily and 65,000 new uploads per day. The Yahoo! Videoblogging Group also saw its membership increase dramatically by August 2005.
Many open source content management systems have enabled the inclusion of video content, allowing bloggers to host and administer their own video blogging sites. In addition, the convergence of mobile phones with digital cameras allows publishing of video content to the Web almost as it is recorded. Radio and television stations may use video blogging as a way to help interact more with listeners and viewers.
Youtube has become a popular platform in order for people to express their emotions to create a giant social community. It has created a place to bring strangers together to reassure each other of their own experiences for any time and place. The emotional exchange and support that Vloggers seek due to a sizeable amount of friendly comments makes making bereavement Vlogs a united and common act.

Guinness World Record

Charles Trippy, under the Internet Killed Television YouTube channel, currently holds the Guinness World Record for the “Most Consecutive Daily Personal Video Blogs Posted On YouTube,” with over 3,000 consecutive videos.

VidCon

Hosted in Los Angeles, California, VidCon is an annual convention that allows YouTube content creators and viewers to come together in order to share content ideas and business contacts. The first VidCon event was held on July 10 and 11, 2010, and has now become the largest in-person gathering of Internet creators, viewers, and representatives. This convention realizes that the ways in which society entertains, educates, shares, and communicates are being revolutionized, and chooses to highlight this fact via panels, meet and greets, and talks given to audiences at the convention.

Uses

Impressions

Vlogs have made it possible to learn about a Vlogger's persona, culture, and impressions using non-verbal hints. Researchers have conducted experiments using crowdsourcing for Amazons Mechanical Turk to determine what kind of personality traits the Vlogger might have. Many Vlogs have been personified by five big personality traits such as Extraversion, Conscientiousness, Agreeableness, Neuroticism, and Openness to Experience. Along with Mechanical turk, researchers also looked at the cues that take place within Vlogs. Vlogs can be broken down to their elements considering that there are a lot of factors that play in the creation of one such as placement of camera, lighting, location, amount of time spent looking at the camera, pitch, delivery and amount of the interactions. Using this information and crowdsourcing, results have revealed that the highest rate in personality research was Agreeableness which makes Vlogging a great place to form Agreeable impressions. However, more non-verbal hints are more noticeable in other form traits such as Extraversion. Regardless, Personality impressions have made a more interesting Vlog viewing experience.

Education

Vlogging has been experimented with school systems to determine if it is a reliable platform to deliver higher educational practices to students. Researchers have done an experiment that placed 42 college freshmen into a control and experimental group of 21 each. Oral proficiency exams were given to all students to reflect their current speech skills, after a year of teachings based on each of the groups preference. The control group was instructed to work with their standard writing skills and create their own blogs, while the Experimental group tested their skills with online interaction. Scores for both groups had increased after both tests, however the experimental group had outperformed the control group due to the improvement of speech proficiency that came as a result of a more interactive learning environment between teachers and classmates. The control group claimed that not using video blogs "lowered their confidence" in their speaking proficiency.

Health

Vlogging has been recently used in research to study how the platform can create a helpful community around people who suffer from chronic illnesses in order to inform viewers, and create closure. Researchers conducted experiments for Vloggers suffering from chronic illnesses such as diabetes, cancer, and human immunodeficiency virus that investigated the relationship between Vloggers and their commentators. A sample of 72 Vlogs were taken from 36 youtubers for analysis with 24 for each of the three mental illnesses. The majority of Vloggers have posted Vlogs as a way to reflect on and share their stories in order to inform viewers about the process and the emotional impact. The study has resulted in the creation of many ad hoc small groups that share personal characteristics and create an online community that expands over time to get more and more viewers involved in creating a supportive community that gives Vloggers the support that they need.

Types

Personal Vlogs

The personal vlog is an online video which records an individual to deliver information that they intend to introduce to people. The audience is not as varied as one's from corporation or organization.

Live broadcasting Vlogs

YouTube announced a live broadcasting feature called YouTube Live in 2008. This feature was also established by other social platforms such as Instagram and Facebook.
Informative Vlogs
Video Blog that is designed to educate the viewer about a particular subject.
Bereavement Vlogs
Video Blog that is designed to express feelings of loss, grief, and mourning.
Conversational Vlogs
Video Blog designed to be formal and create a civil discussion.

Motovlog

Video Blog created while riding a motorcycle

YouTube presence

YouTube currently ranks among the top three most-visited sites on the web. As a high traffic area for video bloggers, or vloggers, YouTube has created a platform for these participants to present their personal videos, which oftentimes are filmed using hand held point and shoot cameras. The popularity of vlogs in the YouTube community has risen exponentially in the past few years; out of the top 100 most subscribed YouTube channels, 17 provide vlogs as their primary style of footage. Many famous youtube Vloggers such as PewDiePie, and Markiplier have gained popularity due to their expressive, open and over the top personalities and personas in their reactions to playing video game content. Compared to a channel like Cryaotic, who uploads lets plays where he presents himself as more inclusive, chill, and basic. As a result, he doesn't gain as much popularity from the online community. Many of these vloggers are a part of the YouTube Partner Program, which professionalizes the industry and allows for monetary gain from video production. This professionalization additionally helps increase exposure to various channels as well as creates a sense of stability within the field. Additionally, this professionalization allows content creators to be deemed a credible source by their viewers. Furthermore, many vloggers have been able to turn their channels into sustainable careers; in 2013, the highest paid vlogger brought in a minimum of $720,000 for the year. Hollywood is taking notice of this rising medium, and has placed its value ranked over other entertainment companies such as Marvel, which is also owned by Disney.

Vlogumentary

I'm Vlogging Here is a 90-minute "vlogumentary" that focuses on documenting the world of video blogging and centers on YouTube vloggers that have found success in using this medium. Starring YouTube personality Shay Carl and his family of ShayTards, this film, to be released in late 2016, follows a family whose lives have been drastically altered by vlogging, as their day-to-day lives are documented and uploaded for the world to see. Shay Carl is a co-founder of Maker Studios, a YouTube based video supplier bought out by The Walt Disney Company. The involvement of larger corporations outside of the Internet industries is a primary example of the ever-increasing need for a strong front on the digital side of one’s company. This documentary is being created by a group with links to the YouTube community in hopes that it will spark interest and raise awareness of the impact that vlogging and the digital community are having on the entertainment industry.

Miscellaneous events