5
May

New feature: video commenting

   Posted by: Greg   in Bloggery

Piggybacking off of some conversations I’ve had about video commenting via the Comment Challenge, I decided to go ahead and install the Seesmic plugin for Wordpress. This will allow me to easily add video posts, but more significantly, will allow for video comments. I ask a few questions in the video, which I’d love some feedback on, whether in video or text.

Update: I’m already seeing a major problem, which is that the video comments aren’t embedded. They are linked to the Seesmic site. Not acceptable. How does TechCrunch have embedded video comments? I can’t figure out how to do it without creating the recording in context, then going over to the Seesmic page for the video and grabbing the embed code. I can do this on a blog post easily enough and that’s what you are seeing in the second video below, but what about for commenters? Doesn’t seem like a very realistic expectation. What am I missing here?

Updating again: I’m thinking that the problem is in my settings and/or theme. Digging…and now asking the Seesmic people over at Get Satisfaction.

One last update: Looks like I got the comments working properly thanks to the good folks at Seesmic. Something was corrupted in my first download of the plugin files. Replacing the files did the trick.

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This entry was posted on Monday, May 5th, 2008 at 11:23 pm and is filed under Bloggery. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

21 comments so far

Diane Hammond
 1 

My initial response to your video comment was positive. I immediately jumped over to Seesmic to see how I could get one of these cool “toys”. I really like the personal element that the video and sound add.

After a few minutes to think this through though, my opinion changes. I’m a scanner. I simply would not take the time to watch more than one video comment attached to a post. There is also no way I would click over to Seesmic to register in order to leave my own video comment. I don’t have time or patience for extra steps.

When you get right down to it, I wouldn’t leave a video comment anyway. I’m camera shy. Gosh if I have to fix my hair, brush my teeth and change my clothes to comment, forget it :-)

Thanks so much for sharing! I now know this isn’t a tool for me.

May 6th, 2008 at 12:20 am
Greg
 2 

Thanks for the feedback, Diane. As you can tell, I made no such effort to clean up for the video!

But yes, the reader’s time is one of my main concerns for the widespread use of video commenting. That said, I don’t see widespread adoption as an imminent threat. This is still pretty much early adopter stuff.

One point of clarification: You don’t need to click over to Seesmic. The registration happens right in the comment area here on this blog. That was pretty painless and not much of a barrier, in my opinion.

Thanks again for checking it out.

May 6th, 2008 at 12:26 am
Mike McDermott
 3 
May 6th, 2008 at 10:02 am
Greg
 4 

See, the problem is that I totally loved that, Mike! I loved hearing your voice and seeing you in your world speaking your mind, no matter how prepared or unprepared your comments may have been. If anything, that reinforced for me how great video commenting could be.

At the same time, it was over four minutes long, which is more than you could reasonably expect anyone other than me, the person to whom you’re responding, to tune in. So that would be an issue moving forward.

I’m still feeling pretty good about the decision to not allow anonymous video commenting. No one has really tried to convince me otherwise.

Thanks for taking the time to chime in!

May 6th, 2008 at 11:36 am
David Bigwood
 5 

When I click on Mike’s comment I only get a black box. Another problem with video comments. Your’s plays just fine.

I don’t think I’d ever leave a video comment unless it was just to pay around with the tool. I’d be apt to skip reading them also. Much quicker to read and/or scan text.

The person leaving the comment might influence my decision to listen. Morgan Webb is just more fun to look at than I am. :-)

No harm in giving folks the option, if it does not take too long to set-up and use. If you start getting tons of spam from webcam strippers it might not be worth the time. Other than that why not? A low use tool with low overhead is nice for those who like it.

May 6th, 2008 at 12:57 pm
Greg
 6 

Strange, David, I’m now experiencing the same thing. Did you break my site? ;-)

There’s harm if I have to spend all afternoon troubleshooting problems with comments displaying, isn’t there?

May 6th, 2008 at 1:21 pm
Mike McDermott
 7 

Yeah - time is the big issue for me: In print, I could have presented what I had to say so that someone reading it would spend 15 seconds taking it in, as opposed to rambling on for 4-1/2 minutes. I probably could also have said what I had to say in about a minute with a little more polished presentation, but still, if you have 10 people respond with videos of a minute each, it becomes much more of a time commitment to keep up. But who knows, there may be times when the audible / visual format really adds something that straight text wouldn’t (Four Words: blog comment rock opera).

May 6th, 2008 at 2:00 pm
Greg
 8 

First of all, let me update and say that the video is playing fine for me now.

I think it always adds something, but it comes at a cost. I’m inclined to provide the option to those who are into it, but with realistic expectations as to how often it will be used. I like that it makes it pretty easy to create and post videos to the blog as well.

May 6th, 2008 at 2:11 pm
Kate Foy
 9 

Not a particularly good video. Bad connection I reckon. Anyhow, words and pictures in this comment.

May 6th, 2008 at 10:06 pm
Kate Foy
 10 

Hi Greg
tried embedding the Seesmic video in my comment (above) but it doesn’t appear to work. I did record within your blog, but when I hit ’send’ I lost it out there … it turned up on my Seesmic site. You might want to check it there.
http://seesmic.com/v/3xM4Ynh7kW

So … I’ve learned a bit more about this neat little app. Still a couple of teething problems at my end, mainly to do with bandwidth I think.

May 6th, 2008 at 10:09 pm
Greg
 11 

Hi Kate! Thanks so much for the video comment! From what I can tell, you can’t use the embed code in a comment unless you are an admin of some sort. To wit:

But I’m more bothered that your attempts to record in context failed to register here. Can’t imagine why. At least it wasn’t lost to the ether.

I’m pretty happy offering both text and video experiences at this point. I like the mix. Of course, I really should be offering audio commenting too. Next project.

May 6th, 2008 at 10:16 pm
pollyalida
 12 

I think it’s a great idea to provide the option for video comments. Some people will use it, some won’t. I’m probably in the latter camp. But I enjoy short video comments from others. SHORT being key. The seesmic login is so simple, quick enough not to be a barrier. Thanks for testing this out!

May 6th, 2008 at 11:20 pm
Tim K
 13 

Great big round of applause to you for being willing to try this new technology! As for myself I have a couple of issues and thoughts on the video commenting concept.

To be totally honest I do a lot of my library related blog reading, posting and commenting during slow times at work. Quite often I find myself using my slow times on the reference desk to catch up on my reading. This would make watching or creating video comments entirely unpractical. Even when I am in my own office, I am not sure I would feel comfortable watching video blogs and I could not make videos since I do not have the equipment to do so at work. So this technology would severely limit my ability to interact with you easily.

I can really see this being used as an adjunct to a regular blog post, where being able to show or demonstrate something would be of value, but not replace the written portion. I agree with Katie that it is nice to hear people’s voices and see there faces, but I am not sure that a pure video blog with video comment would work, unless you established that from the beginning of the blog. Maybe you could set up Greg’s House of video only! I am thinking of trying this and see if I can add a video to my about page on my blog. It could be fun.

Keep on pushing the boundaries!

May 7th, 2008 at 12:49 am
Sue Waters
 14 
May 7th, 2008 at 5:12 am
Mike McDermott
 15 
May 7th, 2008 at 9:47 am
Greg
 16 

@pollyalida Thanks for the encouragement. The more video comments that are left, the more I love the format.

@Tim K - You bring up an excellent point about the suitable-for-workness of browsing video comments. And I face similar issues with not having webcam access at work to record video responses.

I actually think a pure video blog would be pretty slick. Got me thinking, you did.

@Sue - I’m glad I have a reputation for listening to comments! You and I are probably the only people to make it all the way through Mike’s first video.

I hadn’t thought about the loss of those comments in the coComment context. I’m not following threads from this blog there, so it hadn’t occurred to me. Hmmm…that seems like a problem indeed.

@Mike Cool mashup idea. I think the improv actually works pretty well for you. I agree that there is so much additional information and context conveyed in a video comment. That’s a big part of its appeal for me, despite the time-needed-to-consume issue.

May 7th, 2008 at 10:33 am
lauren pressley
 17 
May 7th, 2008 at 10:41 pm
lauren’s library blog » Comment Challenge Reflections
 18 

[...] That I want to think more about online conversations in general. Greg, over at Open Stacks, had an awesome post on video comments. I even left a video comment there. Lately, I’ve been thinking about cases when text is [...]

May 7th, 2008 at 11:04 pm
Greg
 19 
May 8th, 2008 at 12:35 am
Christine Martell
 20 
May 9th, 2008 at 12:18 pm
Greg
 21 
May 11th, 2008 at 1:09 am

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