A video blog or video log, sometimes shortened to vlog (), is a form of
blog
A blog (a truncation of "weblog") is a discussion or informational website published on the World Wide Web consisting of discrete, often informal diary-style text entries (posts). Posts are typically displayed in reverse chronological order ...
for which the medium is
video
Video is an electronic medium for the recording, copying, playback, broadcasting, and display of moving visual media. Video was first developed for mechanical television systems, which were quickly replaced by cathode-ray tube (CRT) syste ...
. Vlog entries often combine embedded video (or a video link) with supporting text, images, and other
metadata
Metadata is "data that provides information about other data", but not the content of the data, such as the text of a message or the image itself. There are many distinct types of metadata, including:
* Descriptive metadata – the descriptive ...
. Entries can be recorded in one take or cut into multiple parts. Vlog category is popular on the video-sharing platform
YouTube
YouTube is a global online video platform, online video sharing and social media, social media platform headquartered in San Bruno, California. It was launched on February 14, 2005, by Steve Chen, Chad Hurley, and Jawed Karim. It is owned by ...
.
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 (vlogs) also often take advantage of
web syndication
Web syndication is a form of syndication in which content is made available from one website to other sites. Most commonly, websites are made available to provide either summaries or full renditions of a website's recently added content. The term ...
to allow for the distribution of video over the Internet using either the
RSS
RSS ( RDF Site Summary or Really Simple Syndication) is a web feed that allows users and applications to access updates to websites in a standardized, computer-readable format. Subscribing to RSS feeds can allow a user to keep track of many di ...
or
Atom
Every atom is composed of a nucleus and one or more electrons bound to the nucleus. The nucleus is made of one or more protons and a number of neutrons. Only the most common variety of hydrogen has no neutrons.
Every solid, liquid, gas, and ...
syndication formats, for automatic aggregation and playback on mobile devices and personal computers (see
video podcast
A podcast is a program made available in digital format for download over the Internet. For example, an episodic series of digital audio or video files that a user can download to a personal device to listen to at a time of their choosing. ...
).
History
In the 1980s, New York artist
Nelson Sullivan
John Nelson Sullivan (March 15, 1948 – July 4, 1989) was an American videographer who chronicled life in Downtown Manhattan’s arts and club scene from 1983 until his death. His hundreds of videos documented daily life in the city, wild nigh ...
documented his experiences travelling around New York City and South Carolina by recording videos in a distinctive vlog-like style.
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
Los Angeles ( ; es, Los Ángeles, link=no , ), often referred to by its initials L.A., is the largest city in the state of California and the second most populous city in the United States after New York City, as well as one of the world' ...
in pursuit of
show business
Show business, sometimes shortened to show biz or showbiz (since 1945), is a vernacular term for all aspects of the entertainment industry.''Oxford English Dictionary'' 2nd Ed. (1989) From the business side (including managers, agents, produc ...
, 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
Steve Garfield is a videographer and video blogger based in Boston, Massachusetts. Known for shows such as ''New Mediacracy'', in 2009 Garfield was inducted into the International Academy of Web Television.
Career
One of the Internet's first v ...
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
YouTube is a global online video platform, online video sharing and social media, social media platform headquartered in San Bruno, California. It was launched on February 14, 2005, by Steve Chen, Chad Hurley, and Jawed Karim. It is owned by ...
, was founded in February 2005. The site's co-founder
Jawed Karim
Jawed Karim (বাংলাঃ জাওয়াদ করিম) (born October 28, 1979) is an American software engineer and Internet entrepreneur of Bangladeshi and German descent. He is a co-founder of YouTube and the first person to up ...
uploaded the first YouTube vlog clip ''
Me at the zoo
"Me at the zoo" is the first video uploaded to YouTube, on April 23, 2005, 8:31:52 p.m. PDT, or April 24, 2005, at 03:31:52 UTC. The 19-second video features YouTube's co-founder Jawed Karim, who was 25 years old at the time, in front of ...
'' on his
channel
Channel, channels, channeling, etc., may refer to:
Geography
* Channel (geography), in physical geography, a landform consisting of the outline (banks) of the path of a narrow body of water.
Australia
* Channel Country, region of outback Austral ...
"
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
YouTubers are people mostly known for their work on the video sharing platform YouTube. The following is a list of YouTubers for whom Wikipedia has articles either under their own name or their YouTube channel name. This list excludes people wh ...
. 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!
Yahoo! (, styled yahoo''!'' in its logo) is an American web services provider. It is headquartered in Sunnyvale, California and operated by the namesake company Yahoo Inc., which is 90% owned by investment funds managed by Apollo Global Man ...
Videoblogging Group also saw its membership increase dramatically by August 2005.
[Those darn video blogging pioneer]
BusinessWeek
[Blogging + Video = Vloggin]
Wired News
Many
open source
Open source is source code that is made freely available for possible modification and redistribution. Products include permission to use the source code, design documents, or content of the product. The open-source model is a decentralized sof ...
content management system
A content management system (CMS) is computer software used to manage the creation and modification of digital content (content management).''Managing Enterprise Content: A Unified Content Strategy''. Ann Rockley, Pamela Kostur, Steve Manning. New ...
s 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
Radio is the technology of signaling and communicating using radio waves. Radio waves are electromagnetic waves of frequency between 30 hertz (Hz) and 300 gigahertz (GHz). They are generated by an electronic device called a transmit ...
and
television station
A television station is a set of equipment managed by a business, organisation or other entity, such as an amateur television (ATV) operator, that transmits video content and audio content via radio waves directly from a transmitter on the earth ...
s may use video blogging as a way to help interact more with listeners and viewers.
Throughout the lifetime of the YouTube platform, vloggers have developed large social communities by expressing emotions of vulnerability and encouraging their viewers to do the same. The effect of this emotional exchange between strangers has been documented, for example, in the popularity of bereavement vlogs, in which grieving individuals reassure each other through friendly comments.
Guinness World Record
In May 2019,
Charles Trippy
Charles Paul Trippy III (born September 2, 1984) is an American musician, vlogger and internet personality based in St. Petersburg, Florida. He is a member of Bradenton-based rock band We the Kings. Trippy recorded his first album with We the ...
was awarded the
Guinness World Record
''Guinness World Records'', known from its inception in 1955 until 1999 as ''The Guinness Book of Records'' and in previous United States editions as ''The Guinness Book of World Records'', is a reference book published annually, listing world ...
for the "Most Consecutive Daily Personal Video Blogs Posted On YouTube", having recorded 3653 consecutive videos to his ''Charles and Allie'' YouTube channel over the previous ten years.
VidCon
Hosted in Los Angeles, California,
VidCon
VidCon is an annual convention for fans, creators, executives, and online brands. The event primarily features prominent video stars from across the internet. In October 2020, VidCon Now relaunched as an ongoing, free digital offering. Vetera ...
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
Researchers have investigated how vlog-style YouTube videos made by creators who suffer from chronic illnesses can raise health awareness among viewers and create social communities among those suffering. A 2014 study evaluated the contextual relationship between vloggers who shared that they had diabetes, cancer, or human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) and their audiences.
Most of the creators of these vlogs chose to focus their videos on how disease diagnosis and treatment had impacted them physically and emotionally. Commenters on the vlogs who shared personal characteristics formed ad hoc small groups; these impromptu support groups expanded over time as more and more people discovered the health vlogs.
Live broadcasting
YouTube announced a live broadcasting feature called
YouTube Live
YouTube Live was a 2008 event streamed live on the Internet from San Francisco and Tokyo. It was launched November 22–23, 2008. It was hosted by a variety of YouTube celebrities, including The Black Eyed Peas rapper will.i.am, Tom Dickson of ...
in 2008. This feature was also established by other social platforms such as
Instagram
Instagram is a photo and video sharing social networking service owned by American company Meta Platforms. The app allows users to upload media that can be edited with filters and organized by hashtags and geographical tagging. Posts can ...
,
Facebook
Facebook is an online social media and social networking service owned by American company Meta Platforms. Founded in 2004 by Mark Zuckerberg with fellow Harvard College students and roommates Eduardo Saverin, Andrew McCollum, Dustin M ...
and
Twitch
Twitch may refer to:
Biology
* Muscle contraction
** Convulsion, rapid and repeated muscle contraction and relaxation
** Fasciculation, a small, local, involuntary muscle contraction
** Myoclonic twitch, a jerk usually caused by sudden muscle co ...
.
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 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
A YouTuber is an online personality and/or influencer who produces videos on the video-sharing platform YouTube, typically posting to their personal YouTube channel. The term was first used in the English language in 2006.
Influence
Influen ...
Shay Carl
Shay Carl Butler (born March 5, 1980), known professionally as Shay Carl, is an American YouTube personality. He has three YouTube channels, two of which ("shaycarl" and "SHAYTARDS") have over three million subscribers. Butler and Corey Vidal ...
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
* 2005, January – Vloggercon, the first vlogger conference, is held in New York City.
* 2006, November –
Irina Slutsky
Irina Slutsky is an American journalist, vlogger, and early pioneer in web series.
Early life
Irina Slutsky was born in Kazakhstan, which was, at the time, part of the Soviet Union. Speaking of her childhood in 2007, Slutsky said "When I lived in ...
created and hosted The Vloggies, the first annual video blog awards.
* 2007, May and August – ''
The Wall Street Journal
''The Wall Street Journal'' is an American business-focused, international daily newspaper based in New York City, with international editions also available in Chinese and Japanese. The ''Journal'', along with its Asian editions, is published ...
'' places a grandmother on the front page of its Personal Journal section. In August 2007, she was featured on an ''
ABC World News Tonight
''ABC World News Tonight'' (titled ''ABC World News Tonight with David Muir'' for its weeknight broadcasts since September 2014) is the flagship daily evening news broadcasting#television, television news program of ABC News, the news division ...
'' segment
showing the elderly now becoming involved in the online video world.
See also
*
History of blogging
While the term "blog" was not coined until the late 1990s, the history of blogging starts with several digital precursors to it. Before "blogging" became popular, digital communities took many forms, including Usenet, commercial online services su ...
*
Lifecasting (video stream)
Lifestreaming is an act of documenting and sharing aspects of one's daily social experiences World Wide Web, online, via a lifestream website that collects the things person chooses to publish (e.g. photos, Twitter, tweets, videos) and presents t ...
*
Livestream
Livestreaming is streaming media simultaneously recorded and broadcast in real-time over the internet. It is often referred to simply as streaming. Non-live media such as video-on-demand, vlogs, and YouTube videos are technically streamed, but no ...
*
Photoblog
A photoblog (or photolog) is a form of photo sharing and publishing in the format of a blog. It differs from a blog through the predominant use of and focus on photographs rather than text. Photoblogging (the action of posting photos to a photob ...
*
Video podcast
A podcast is a program made available in digital format for download over the Internet. For example, an episodic series of digital audio or video files that a user can download to a personal device to listen to at a time of their choosing. ...
References
External links
A Certain Tendency in Videoblogging and Rethinking the Rebirth of the Author, academic essay on videobloggingA Post-Cinema of Distractions: On the Genealogical Constitution of Personal Videoblogging, academic essay on videobloggingASL Vlog & Video Directory
{{DEFAULTSORT:Video Blogging
Film and video technology
*
.
Web syndication
Technology in society
Articles containing video clips
American inventions
Bangladeshi inventions
German inventions