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The faster the Internet gets, the less patience we all have with even the most insignificant of waits. A new study shows that a mere two second delay is enough for many people to give up and move on.
According to the recent study, based on 2.3 million views by 6.7 million unique users, users will start abandoning “short” videos after two seconds, and that 20 percent have moved on after five seconds. As far as the study is concerned, “short” equals “less than 30 minutes,” so you can probably imagine the migration happens even faster when you’re talking about a one or two minute clip. Viewers waiting for longer flicks (probably films) are willing to put up with a lot more BS.
This mass buffering exodus isn’t the same across the board however. A user’s patience also depends on the type of network they’re using. Fiber, Cable, and DSL users are all pretty similarly impatient, but mobile users are far more likely to wait around staring at the buffering animation like a chump, which isn’t all too surprising.
Where do you stand on the Internet video waiting game? Does two seconds sound like an instant, or more like an eternity? [GigaOM]
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I only open videos I know I actually want to watch. So no, I don’t run off crying after a two second wait.
Same, the only reason I would leave after 2 secs is if I see a youtube link and click on it then read the title.
A bigger gripe I have is being forced to watch a 30 second advert before I get to the 52 second video clip I’m wanting to watch. Youtube normall offer a “skip advert in 5s” feature for short clips but some other video sites like Yahoo make you sit through the same 30s advert no matter how long or short your clip is.
Ad Block is your friend (in most cases). I don’t mind banners though as sites need the hits but for videos, especially the types you mentioned, is too much wasted time.
I use IE so I don’t have adblock. But thanks for the tip, I’ll see if there’s something similar on IE.
But I thought with Virgin Media we could “say goodbye to buffering”
we do say goodbye to buffering… at the same time we say goodbye to the power as we reset the f***ing router for the 3rd time that day..
The wonderful Virgin Media Super Hub. It is neither super or a hub.
I wait for it to start playing the video, if it takes longer than 10 seconds I move on. If it stops after it starts, then that’s it. Instantly find a new one.
Generally watch tv episodes or movies online, so I don’t mind waiting for a bit if it’s a good quality link.
My major gripe are the adverts that come up at the side of the screen playing ‘Dettol’ adverts or some other useless cleaning products I’m never going to buy
Youtube annoys me because I cannot stream anything >360p at most times. I have a fast connection (according to speedtest.net) but access to youtube is just appauling.
Yeah, I get the same problem. 60Mb/s according to speedtest.net, but Youtube is still often really slow. I tend to assume that it is Youtube being slow rather than my connection.
It is. I can download things with reasonable speed, but youtube just cannot handle it.
Youtube’s server is strange. I get better streaming speed for 720p than I do for 480p, and that’s for the same video.
Yeah, I think that is when different quality files have ended up on different servers.
tl:dr
IF the video takes more than a few seconds to buffer then you know it’ll be buffering all the way through so I just then go to youtube as someone will have uploaded it there. On the whole Youtube loads like half the video straight away and you know you’re good to go.
If it doesn’t buffer in like 10 seconds, I refresh a few of times.
People these days are too lazy.