The startup Seesmic provides a video comment service to blogs, through installation of a WordPress plugin. Any reader with a microphone enabled webcam can then leave comments in video form.
Seesmic has been working with Disqus, a blog commenting service (previously covered by the Blog Herald here and here) to provide video comments to Disqus-enabled blogs. Now, bloggers using Disqus can easily activate Seesmic video comments through just one setting.
Just log into your Disqus dashboard, click the “Configure” tab, and under “General Settings” check the box next to “Enable video comments”. That’s it – your blog now is now set up to receive video comments!
Personally have mixed feelings regarding video comments, as I can type much faster than I can prepare some thoughts for the camera and make myself presentable and set up lighting and sound for a webcam. As a blogger and a reader, it’s much easier and faster to skim through a column of text than multiple video comments. Lastly, there’s comment moderation. Will I have to watch every video to check for questionable content or spam?
Perhaps Seesmic could add transcription text that would appear as a text comment in the traditional manner, or just to the blog owner for moderation purposes. I have no idea if this is even technically possible to automate (voice recognition software?), but it would solve the latter two issues above.
Still, these are just my personal misgivings regarding video comments. Ultimately, I turned on them on because some readers may really like them, and providing communication options is part of the blogger’s duty to their readers (like providing an RSS feed). Second, the easy, one check box process provided by Disqus was ridiculously easy – I barely had any time to contemplate my misgivings.
So what do you think about video comments? Meh? Pretty Cool?
In any event, I suppose I should dust off the web cam and brush up on my oral presentation skills just in case this thing catches on.
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Jane
It will catch on eventually. I’ve been using Seesmic for a few weeks now and my readers are also a little divided about using video comments for some of the reasons you mention.
They’ve also reported one or two tech-related matters: slow bandwidth etc. Disqus integration with Seesmic is a great step up! I was missing this.
I think once people get over being shy about being seen and learn to trust their voices and what they have to say, that the whole experience will become easier.
As to length of comment … well rambling will add a few seconds, but why would a video comment have to be longer than a written one?
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