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This was inspired by another conversation over on antville and shots ring out.

There has been much talk about YouToogle and possible replacements for the titan of web video. No one is happy with the picture quality of Das Tube – other than R Kelly who enjoys the graininess because it allows Kells to claim that ain’t him sexing the underage girls on the home video.

There will someday (and soon) be a new and improved YouTube. Maybe Google will upgrade their new purchase to HD or maybe some other new site will come in and have better tech that pushes out Das Tube. It will happen, but the details don’t matter. Not to me and not to the regular people who have made YouTube the hit it is.

I use a car. Every day. It has a complicated motor inside. I don’t care. Add gas. Change oil occasionally. Do that and the car takes me where I want to go. I care about the destination, not the process. That doesn’t mean the process isn’t important, but if the engineer/designer/builder does their job right, it doesn’t matter to me whether my car has a five speed automatic transmission or a six cylinder engine. If they do their job right, I only have to care about my goal – “get to store for more Mickey’s Wide Mouths and non-fat cottage cheese singles”.

In the early days of cars, like 1911, drivers had to know how to crank the vehicle to start it and have some knowledge of repairing/maintaining the ungainly beasts. These cars never really took off in the market-place. But when the Model T came along with radically better reliability and simplicity – people started ditching horses for Fords.

Das Tube is great at simplicity. I click and the video plays. Every, mutha-farking time. No ifs, ands or buts. That is what matters to me. I get to see the video when I click. It seems pretty simple.

If you find yourself thinking, “Well all you have to do on (name of higher tech video service) is be sure your browser accepts cookies and download the driver that will …” then you are a tech nerd. Tech nerds were the guys out buying those early horseless carriages because they liked the challenge as much as they liked getting from point A to B. Tech nerds are great. They read websites about music videos. Hell, they often direct music videos. But tech nerds are NOT normal people.

Web videos need to be 100% easy or they will get ignored (Hello, MTV Underwhelm). Video links/files are useful if, and only if, I can instantly send it to a co-worker or friend and it will definitely play for them. The last thing you wanna hear when you send a buddy a video of Britney’s pastrami curtains is that the damn thing wouldn’t open. Of course, a better quality picture is better, but only if we can launch the video on your computer or otherwise it won’t matter.

At some point, the new service(s) will be all that, but for now, YouTube is the best option for normal folks. When that change-over happens, the tech guys will have known about the new service for months - but it won't matter until us regular types figure it out and flock there like lemmings.

Labels: antville, download, music video, YouTube