Video Commenting is Here
Today Mashable announced that they have introduced video commenting. It is a great feature and as Pete points out “the way of the future”. I am not aware of other blogs that allow their readers to do this, so this is a first. At least in a high traffic site as far as I know.
Readers can leave a video through a number of methods, record one right there via their webcam, upload a video from their computer or they can insert a link to a video that they select from any URL. This is where it gets interesting because as you will see this opens up some very real opportunities for spammers, a different breed of bottom feeders (the video is from the post above – for context):
Pete has been very cleaver and quite humorous in his video but the message is quite a serious one. There is no doubt that video is exploding and one of the biggest problems for this medium is the fact that you can’t pass the video through any software that will detect spam. There is no Akismet for video, in the words of Pete.Then is there any benefit for spammers to submit video spam? They are not indexed by Google, they don’t contain links or references to another site in text. So the benefits of regular comment spamming are not there. In addition, the effort of recording video, hosting it and serving it to the mass spamming operation that would ensue is probably not worth it either. So we are looking at a more sophisticated and subtle spammer, subliminal maybe? So the advent of video commenting may be a good thing for bloggers and commenting. The Mashable test will be as good a place as any to watch the results.
What about you? Would you use video to comment about a post?
March 20th, 2008 at 12:20 am
Clearly there will be less video comments than text ones for now at least. It takes more effort, and a better connection/equipment. If i’m really passionate about something, I’ll use the video comment. While I’m at work, not so much…since talking to myself may get me fired. At home? Sure.
It’ll be interesting to see how it plays out, but Mashable has definitely broken some ground here.
March 20th, 2008 at 2:28 am
[...] TPN :: The Global Geek Podcast » Blog Archive » Video Commenting is Here “There is no doubt that video is exploding and one of the biggest problems for this medium is the fact that you can’t pass the video through any software that will detect spam. There is no Akismet for video, in the words of Pete.” (tags: video spam comments problems media+evolution tidbits+fodder) [...]
March 20th, 2008 at 12:57 pm
Now you have to be shaved even on the Internet ;]. LOL.
Personally, I am not that sure that it will bring anything more than video spamming. We’ve had audio commenting for sometime now and we all know it’s not been extremely very successful. Even with a dedicated phone line everyone is too lazy.
It’s so hard for people to write few lines in the comments’ section after a podcast and the same will be for the video.
Raf
March 20th, 2008 at 4:05 pm
@Raf yeah people are lazy. We have to really push the audio comments thing and we only get a few over time. But maybe that will change. I know that I am totally comfortable leaving a video comment, others are not but meh. I think there are pros and cons for it as well; hard to reference back to something someone said as opposed to reading the words.
It is however the way that things are going to go. I wonder how long it will be before we see a WordPress Plugin for it? Jeffro??
March 21st, 2008 at 2:01 am
I just thought of some use case.
I think it would be good if I could add my own short screencast or some other video on top of my video comment. Instead of facing the camera I would be recording what I see on my screen and presenting a cool website I found in my own words with a video or an app.
- “if you go here and click on the link here this and this happens”
- “you have found a nice app, here is another one and looks like this” etc.
Sometimes it’s hard to express something only in writing. I guess for the time being we will have to turn the laptop towards a remote camera providing you have both, which
seldom happens. Other than that no so much interesting.
Or maybe if I had a question to the Mac lab rat, he would record a quick anwser in the comments on his Mac and just point me with his mouse on where I go/click to fix something. It will be easier than a normal text reply to follow.