It seems that more and more companies are jazzing up their websites by using multimedia assets, in particular flash movies and video content.
This video content changes the interactive experience and it seems the ideals of the accessible and usability best practice have been sidelined for flashiness!
A quick look at the newer flash sites of the day show a return to watchable entertaining content over simple well presented accessible information.
http://www.thepantswhisperer.com
The reasons for this trend could be put down to the rise in the User Generated Content websites such as MySpace and You Tube and in fact the video content can be “viralled” via You Tube, and its clones adding an additional delivery impact to the main message. Since this video based content is not search engine friendly and the site owners need to rely on viral marketing and ingenious link building campaigns to maintain the level of exposure. Sites are often still slow to load !
