A video blog or video log, sometimes abbreviated as vlog (/ˈviːˌlɒɡ/), is a form of vlog that uses video as its medium. Vlog entries often include embedded videos (or a video link) accompanied by supporting text, images, and other metadata. Entries can be recorded in a single take or edited into multiple parts. Vlogs are popular on video sharing platforms like YouTube.
In recent years, “vlogging” has given rise to a large community on social media, becoming one of the most popular forms of digital entertainment. It is widely believed that, besides being entertaining, vlogs can provide in-depth context through imagery, unlike written blogs.
Video logs (vlogs) often take advantage of web syndication formats such as RSS or Atom to enable automatic aggregation and playback on mobile devices and personal computers, allowing distribution of videos across the internet (see video podcasts).
History
Nelson Sullivan, an artist from New York, was known in the 1980s for recording videos in a style similar to vlogs around New York City and South Carolina.
On January 2, 2000, Adam Contreras posted a video along with a blog entry aimed at informing his friends and family about his cross-country move to Los Angeles in pursuit of show business, which later became the first-ever post in the history of a video blog. That same year, in November, Adrian Miles uploaded a video post changing text on a still image to reference his video blog, coining the word “vlog.” Filmmaker and musician Luuk Baumann started his now-inactive Tropisms.org site in 2002 as a video diary of his post-college travels, one of the earliest sites called a vlog or videolog. In 2004, Steve Garfield launched his own video blog and declared that year the “Year of the Video Blog.”
1. YouTube
In 2005, there was a significant rise in the popularity of vlogging. The most popular video sharing site, YouTube, was founded in February 2005. Co-founder Javed Karim uploaded the first YouTube vlog clip titled “Me at the Zoo” on his channel “Javed” in April 2005. My everyday life and “dry aesthetics” at the zoo set the tone for the type of amateur vlogging content that would become typical on YouTube, especially among YouTubers. By July 2006, YouTube had become the fifth most popular web destination, with the site receiving millions of views daily and 65,000 new uploads every day. The Yahoo! Video Blogging Group also saw dramatic growth in its membership by August 2005.
Several open-source content management systems made it possible to incorporate video content, allowing bloggers to host and manage their video blogging sites. Additionally, the convergence of digital cameras with mobile phones enables recording and publishing video content almost instantly on the web. Radio and television stations can also use video blogging to engage more with their audiences.
YouTube has become a popular platform for individuals to express their feelings and create a vast social community. It has created a space where strangers can come together to share their experiences at any time and place, assuring each other. Due to a large number of friendly comments, vloggers seeking emotional exchange and support find vlogs a shared and common activity, including mourning vlogs.
2. Guinness World Record
In May 2019, Charles Trippy was recognized by Guinness World Records for “most consecutive daily personal video blogs posted on YouTube,” having recorded 3,653 videos continuously over the past ten years on his channels Charles and Eiley.
3. VidCon
Held in Los Angeles, California, VidCon is an annual convention that brings together YouTube content creators and audiences to share ideas and professional contacts. The first VidCon event took place on July 10-11, 2010, and has since become the largest gathering of internet creators, audiences, and representatives. The conference recognizes the revolutionary changes in how society entertains, educates, shares, and communicates, highlighting these through panels, meet-and-greets, and talks given at the event.
Usage
1. Impressions
Vlogs have made it possible to learn about a vlogger’s personality, culture, and impressions using non-verbal cues. Researchers have used crowdsourcing via Amazon Mechanical Turk to determine the personality traits of vloggers. Many vlogs are expressed through the Big Five personality traits such as extraversion, conscientiousness, agreeableness, neuroticism, and openness to experience. Using Mechanical Turk, researchers also examined cues within vlogs.
Vlogs can be broken down into their components, considering the many factors involved in their creation, such as camera setup, lighting, location, time spent looking at the camera, pitch, delivery, and amount of interaction. By utilizing this information and crowdsourcing, results showed that the highest agreement in personality impressions was for agreeableness, which makes vlogging a great medium to create agreeable impressions. However, more non-verbal cues are more noticeable for other traits like extraversion. Nonetheless, personality impressions tend to make the viewing experience more engaging.
2. Education
Vlogging has been experimented with in school systems to determine if it is a reliable platform for delivering high educational practices. Researchers conducted a study with 42 new college students divided into control and experimental groups of 21 each. After one year of education based on their preferences, all students took an oral proficiency exam to demonstrate their current speaking skills.
The control group was instructed to work with their standard writing skills and create their own blogs, whereas the experimental group tested their skills through online interactions. Both groups showed improvement in scores after the tests, but the experimental group performed better than the control group due to improvements in speech fluency, which resulted from a more interactive learning environment involving teachers and peers. The control group claimed that not using video blogs reduced their confidence in speaking proficiency.
3. Health
Recent research has been conducted to study how platforms can inform audiences and foster closer connections, creating supportive communities around individuals suffering from chronic illnesses. Researchers studied vloggers with chronic illnesses such as diabetes, cancer, and human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), examining relationships between vloggers and their commenters. A sample of 72 vlogs from 36 YouTubers was analyzed, with 24 representing each of three mental health conditions. Most vloggers posted videos as reflections and ways to inform their audience about the process and emotional impact. The study resulted in forming various ad hoc small groups sharing personal traits and creating an online community that extends over time, engaging more viewers to become part of a supportive community that provides the support vloggers need.
Live Broadcasting
YouTube announced a live streaming feature called YouTube Live in 2008. This feature has also been adopted by other social platforms such as Instagram, Facebook, and Twitch.
YouTube Presence
Currently, YouTube ranks among the top three most viewed sites on the web. As a high-traffic platform for video bloggers, or vloggers, YouTube has created a space for participants to showcase their personal videos, often filmed using handheld point-and-shoot cameras. The popularity of vlogging within the YouTube community has grown rapidly over the past few years; 17 out of the top 100 most subscribed YouTube channels feature vlogs as their primary content.
Many of these vloggers are part of the YouTube Partner Program, which professionalizes the industry and allows monetization of video production. This commercialization additionally helps increase engagement across various channels and fosters a sense of stability within the field. Furthermore, it enables content creators to be viewed as credible sources by their audiences. Additionally, many vloggers have managed to turn their channels into permanent careers; in 2013, the highest-paid vlogger earned a minimum of $720,000 for the year. Hollywood is taking note of this emerging medium, placing its value alongside other entertainment companies like Marvel, which is also owned by Disney.
Vlogumentary
I am vlogging here—a 90-minute “vlogumentary” dedicated to documenting the world of video blogging and focusing on successful YouTube vloggers who have used this medium. Featuring YouTube personalities Shay Carl and his family, the ShayTards, this film, scheduled for release at the end of 2016, follows a family whose lives have been significantly changed by vlogging as they document their daily lives and upload them for the world to see.
Shay Carl is a co-founder of Maker Studios, a YouTube-based video provider acquired by The Walt Disney Company. The participation of large corporations outside the internet industries is a primary example of the growing need for a strong front on the digital side of any company. This documentary is being made by a group connected to the YouTube community in hopes of sparking interest and raising awareness about the impact of vlogging and the digital community on the entertainment industry.
Various Events
1. January 2005 – VlogCon, the first vlogger conference, was held in New York City.
2. November 2006 – Irene Slutsky created and hosted The Vloggies, the first annual video blog awards.
3. May and August 2007—The Wall Street Journal featured a grandma on the front page of its Personal Journal section. In August 2007, she was shown in a segment by ABC World News Tonight, which highlighted how seniors are now participating.
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