Too Personal

Human interaction is a strange thing. For some reason I'm far more likely to text my best friends than phone or mail them. I've no idea why.

News that Facebook has added a video calling app is therefore interesting. Apparently most people have seventeen friends on Facebook and around four hundred 'acquaintances', so will people start to stratify their profiles in case they're called by relative strangers ?

I spend a few hours a day on Skype or IM with colleagues around the world; almost all these interactions are video capable, since we all have cameras in our computers, but this function is never used.

Video is, somehow, too much of a broadcast medium in this context. Two way video communication has been around for eons, but apart from some narrow business applications has yet to find purchase.

Comments

rabbitrun said…
Totally agree with your comments about user behaviour with video for communication. In one to ones on Skype video adds nothing to the occasion so we don't feel compelled. We've all heard the stories of the videoconferencing equipment gathering dust, despite the fact that it's there to aid communication and save money with less face to face meetings and fewer airline tickets.

So are there situations when video is the answer and people are willing to use it?
10:15 PM
Post a Comment