It also wasn't a surprise because video is something that has been forced on the readership of news websites without the demand to really drive it. There were enough dumbarse futurists predicting that everything could be video-based in a few years to convince media companies to go big on it, at a time when resources were already being tightly squeezed.
And it's a big gamble that hasn't paid off for many. All that optimism about a shiny, digital video future just hasn't been matched by reality. Journalists can do things with video they can't do in any other medium, but that doesn't mean everybody wants all video, all the time.
Sometimes you just want to skim-read a fucking article in less than a minute, rather than have somebody spoon-feed you the words for four minutes. Sometimes you get a bit sick of endlessly telling a news website to 'never auto-play', and the loudest noise in the whole wide world is video that suddenly starts auto-playing at full volume when you're trying to get some quiet time in a quiet bathroom, and there is somebody in the stall next to you.
Power-hungry videos can also eat up a user's data and power, and when they get stuck 38 seconds into a video, they lock up everything on a device and render the technological marvel that is a modern smartphone as useful as a turd in a hurricane.
And they just require more attention from the consumer for longer - while you can flick back and forth on a regular text article between your other daily business, you have to keep your eyeballs and ears focused on a video report, which is at odds with society's ever-decreasing attention span.
Despite these shortcomings, many print, radio and TV media companies have invested heavily in this promised audience, often at the expense of "old-fashioned" shit like regular reporting on dull-but-worthy subjects - stories that might not have a sexy video angle, but are a vital part of a decent news organisation.
Some newsrooms in the US have effectively fired their entire staff to pay for a new team with a video-first direction, and now that they aren't getting the hits they hoped for, they're firing those video teams as well, leaving nothing but scorched earth and the lingering stench of over-reach.
There is no denying that there are good things about the video revolution in online news - media stand-ups have far more punch when they are live-streamed, and there is a definite audience for strong video content.
It was also the only part of the whole online business that was actually making any proper money for years, because they could put ads in the front of them; and people just like a lot of their news with moving pictures - even though many media experts often like to point out how little they watch television news, the 6pm TV bulletins still get a massive audience that their print counterparts can only dream of.
But it also takes a lot of effort to put out videos that people will actually want to watch, and so many people have been turned off by half-arsed efforts, as stretched staff do the best they can with limited resources, with news and stories that might not merit such attention.
This is why the pivot to video strategy has been such a failure, and Facebook's admission that it was juicing its numbers is going to see a lot of media companies cut back on all that effort, and any that gambled big on a video audience are going to be in big trouble. This is already happening overseas, and New Zealand is far from immune.
Facebook's ubiquity in society means it will somehow get through this whole 'spouting bullshit about its video numbers' with a minimum of fuss, but as ever, the social media giant is leaving a cratered and battered news media behind it. Someone should do a video about it.
- Katherine Grant
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