News:Rewired, the digital journalism event run by journalism.co.uk, dedicated its most recent conference entirely to video. There were some fantastic takeaways. In no order of importance, here they (belatedly) are. 

1) Virality isn't a strategy. It's too variable, says Asish Patel of NowThisNews, which tells news stories through short-form video. His team analyses the lowest 25% performing items rather than the best-performing. It explains why they have an astonishing 79% completion rate.

2) The 'getting social right on video' panel was fascinating. "Make something that makes sense for the end user on the right platform. You don't put Boko Haram content on Instagram," added Patel. The BBC's Esra Doğramacı said watch time is the important YouTube metric.

3) Video outperforms Economist text articles on Facebook, disclosed its deputy community editor Adam Smith.

4) Shooting VR is like theatrical staging, says WSJ's Executive Producer for Video Parminder Bahra. But 360 video is something that we currently do 'later' (like at home). "We are not going to put a headset on the Tube just yet. So we must think about when we publish a VR piece and how and when we try to get that to people."

5) Dmitry Shishkin, who pioneers digital innovation at the BBC, gave a fascinating talk on the corporation's efforts to achieve text-to-speech synthesis through virtual voiceover translation. There was "incredible" pushback to start, with quality acceptance later on. The audience feedback was favourable. One response: "I had no idea this kind of thing existed. I got a real sense of the future. I have just one word: …awesome." Why is this important? Some 1 billion more people will come online by 2020 — mainly from Africa, the Middle East and Asia.

6) Facebook Live is something definitely worth exploring. The network's algorithm is giving it a massive push out the door.

7) It's worth checking out the Palestine Remix by Al Jazeera, showcased by Konstantinos Antonpoulos. They've had 5,000 remixes since its launch, an amazing response from its audience, although questions were raised over questions of editorial balance by grabbing bits of programmes.

8) The Reuters TV iOS app is geared for on-demand. You can choose a duration of between 5 to 30 minutes.