Video Surpasses Text On the Internet

Posted June 03, 2016

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Yesterday, Mary Meeker, highly respected Wall Street media analyst, gave her long- awaited and much anticipated annual Internet Trends report.

Each year, Meeker, a partner at VC firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers sets the tone for where the tech world is headed

There were many points in the report, but the one that stands out for us is that video is now surpassing, and will continue to surpass text on the Internet.

The reason for this is fairly simple, actually. When the Internet was first established, bandwidth was difficult to come by - hence the vast majority of content, if not all of it, was text.  I can well remember waiting for photos to resolve on my dial-up connection. 

Bandwidth now, howver, is exploding exponentially, and as it does, it is getting filled with images in general and video in particular.

Video is rapidly becoming the lingua franca of the Internet world.

And... Mary Meeker says we are just at the beginning of this trend, as video begins to percolate into and dominate every platform.  Snapchat, which surpassed Twitter in number of users has also, astonishingly, surpassed Facebook in video views.

For a video version of this (and if you can't wait for my live stream later today!), here's the story from CBS This Morning, (where Lisa caught it!)

You will note that this is not just about YouTube type videos.  Video increasingly is becoming intertwined with text to create a kind of visual tapestry. It's a new grammar, and that is why we feel that video literacy is so important.  

That is why we launched this site to begin with, and that is why we are focusing all our efforts now on social media video, where it is headed, what you need to know and most imporrtanly, how you can profit from it.  

Be sure to join us here next Wednesday at 12:30 PM when we will live stream on the impact and implications of live streaming.  And send in your questions beforehand.