My reasons why video comments will work (and why you have to try and give them a chance)

We are thrilled that after the success of our Video comments plugin for Wordpress that got installed on nearly 300 blogs, disqus enabled video comments using Seesmic this morning. I see lots of people wondering if they will work or not. I think it is way too early to get to any conclusion, it is a very new way of communicating and it will take time.

We are not used to talk to a webcam alone and if you remember when we started blogging, everybody thought it was kind of weird. Well talking to a webcam is much more weird. The way I do it every day is I imagine the people I am talking to. For example my videos on http://loic.tv get an average of 3000 views a day and are approaching one million views in total. I try to imagine talking to all these people, like if you are in a conference addressing the audience. What is difficult is that you don't "feel" them as when you speak in public. Still, they are here. Depending on the community of the blog where you leave the video comment, you may not reach that many people, but is it the number of people that really matter or who you are talking to?

1. get to know your community better

Video gives you a much better sense of who is talking: you get to see her or him, hear, see, view gestures and get feelings. Somebody said recently "on Seesmic you know if people are honest", I loved it. They are very authentic.

Video comments allow publishers to connect with their reader in a much better way

2. less spam

unless you put a bag on your head, video comments are not anonymous. It is like in real life. You could say you don't like me in my back or you could tell me directly in front of me. A video comment is much more direct, and straight. It will reduce spam as people have to show their faces. (Yes, they can show something else than their faces too, but you get the point)

3. it gives some accountability to people

It is really easy to leave an anonymous comment in text, insult people, criticize etc. On a video comment, you have to be yourself and take responsibility for what you say. I like that.

4. they are great promotion for you

There aren't that many video comments around for the time being, that is true, and it is an opportunity to get noticed. Leaving a video comment on a TechCrunch post for example catches the readers' attention amongst 100 text comments.

5. they are not heavy and do not slow down your blogs

I have read in some places (including Fred Wilson this morning) that video comments enabled on your blogs would slow them down and make them heavy. Pay attention to the fact that the Seesmic player is only launched when you click on the thumbnail. The thumbnails of the comments are light and load fast, they do not slow down your blogs.

6. why not?

Why kill them before even giving them a chance? It's new, it's not in our common way of using the web and our computers, let's see if it sticks. Why would we have so many conversations in text on the web and not in video?

We have newspapers, books, radio and TV. They are not replacing one another, they are different. Why not video conversations?

7. conversations are huge on TV

See the success of talk shows on TV. They are everywhere and I enjoy watching them from now and then. I was invited regularly on two TV talk shows in France, "en aparte" et "n'ayons pas peur des mots" on Canal+ and i>tele. I really enjoyed it but was also very frustrated that we were only few people debating to an audience that could not react. Video conversations let anybody react and talk if they like.

8. Seeing my friends is cool

I like seeing friends. I like seeing people I do not know yet and you get to know them much better than in text. I feel I know some people on Seesmic much better than people I just read and have not met yet.

9. it is almost like meeting them

Someone on Seesmic recently was saying that he or she could not remember if she had met or not somebody he or she is used to see in video. Video gets very close to meeting someone, it is as close as we can get to meeting in person.

11. the geek world may not reflect what will happen in other communities

we tend to think too much with our geek world in mind. Think about a political blog. Think about dating. There are many conversations where video will make tons of sense, I think.

12. video is a much better way to show you things than describe them, see Robert Scoble's example below.

13. it is conduit for more emotional response compared to just leaving a text comment

Can't wait to see them enabled on some political blogs. Text brings more emotions and debate will get very intense when people have passionate debates.

14. They tear down that barrier that the internet is just a cold, spaceless place

Meeting people on the internet through video is much warmer than reading text. I have never felt that close to some people in my community than since I "met them" in video.

objections and how we try hard (or will try) to address them

1. they take time to watch

This is true. Much more than a text comment. We are thinking about how to solve this and an obvious answer is metadata. This one could be generated by software/voice recognition+human help like spinvox does.

We are also thinking about adding a visual sign if they are less than one or a few minutes so that you know before having to watch it.

2. they are not accessible to the deaf

True, subtitles is probably the way to go and unsure how we can subtitle all the comments, maybe enable wiki-style subtitling like dotsub does, but do not forget deaf can use video too

3. people generally talk for too long

That can be a problem but also a great advantage if you are interested into what person says. In this case you really want to learn more. Metadata is the answer.

4. with text all the power is in the reader, while with video, the power is in the author

I like this one, but I kind of disagree as you can always stop the video and go to the next one.

5. they are not searchable

That is true and metadata, again, is the solution.

6. they disrupt the conversation

Should they be integrated in text comments or kept separate like what we did in any Seesmic video conversation thread? We don't know, this is why we enable both and we will see what people prefer. I like both text and video integrated, we do this in Friendfeed too, people can leave text comments on any seesmic video on Friendfeed.