The Last Podcast Opinionated Web 2.0 News and Commentary

Video Comments are a Dumb Idea.

I see TechCrunch now has integrated commenting via Seesmic videos on all TechCrunch blogs (no surprise given that Michael Arrington is a Seesmic investor).

I can’t help but think that this is an utterly dumb idea – kind of like Seesmic itself.

I can see why people would prefer to leave a video comment. I understand that a large part of human communication is through tone of voice and body language. I’m sure a lot of people would be less rude on video than in text and a lot of fights could be prevented – but overall, I don’t think this outweighs the massive negative aspects of video comments.

For comments on a blog – text is a far better medium. Why? Scannability – by human and computer.

I can easily scan through the 150 comments on the TechCrunch post announcing this ‘feature’ in a minute. But if I wanted to watch 150 videos, that would take me forever – and there is no indication right now of how long they are before you click on them, btw.

A computer can do the same and look for spam and, if I so prefer, profanities, racial slurs etc.

All of this, I give up when I use video for my comments.

Video opens up all kinds of new avenues for spammers, but besides that, as Jeff Hutch has pointed out here, it’s basically impossible to have a conversation this way. And I simply can’t wait for the first hardcore porn video to pop up on TechCrunch.

There is just so much wrong with this: I can’t cite somebody easily, I can check for spam easily; I don’t know if I’m going to waste my time on a video; and, this is a big one, if I don’t have headphones or speakers (like in an office), I’m shut out of the conversation.

Of course, that’s also the exact same reason why Seesmic itself is bound to be a failure.

Final verdict: I hope this dies a quick (and not too painful) death and I hope most bloggers will shun this shiny new object and ignore that they can install this on their own blogs through this Wordpress plugin.

There should be a ‘porn only’ video comment policy to help nip this madness in the bud.

If there was some way to give good info before clicking the video, that’d help. You know, like a text transcript of what the person says posted beside their video…

Also – thanks for the link in the story. One small thing – I’m Hutch, not Jeff.

See you in the movies.

@bhc3 – sorry about the name – I must have confused the name of your site with my online friend “jeffisnotageek”

@Alan – a day of porn comments only on TechCrunch – that should do it

Think of it this way, at least with video commenting you’re breaking down the anonymity barrier which allows people to say whatever they like when commenting on a blog without being named and shamed but when you appear on video I think people will think twice before saying what they were going to say in the first place.

However are geeks/nerds really going to want to video themselves? I mean most of the geeks/nerds I know are quite self self-conscious.

@william – I agree with you, but I think the negatives I listed in the post far outweigh the advantage of braking down the anonymity
(of course, who wouldn’t like to see more civil blog comments to become the norm?).

If nobody sees your comment, it doesn’t help that you weren’t anonymous…

[...] those blogs. While I might not be as extreme in the idea of video blogging or Seesmic being useless as Frederic from The Last Podcast is I do agree with him that for blog comments text is the better medium. For comments on a blog – text [...]

How about audio comments?

We made a system to do that at CelleCast, and although I made it to talk back to radio shows, maybe we can adapt it to plug into blogging in a productive way.

Not a plug, a real inquiry here.