Josh Catone has an awesomesauce post about the cons of integrating video comments into a sites commenting section and a poll asking whether or not you’d like to see it incorporated on ReadWriteWeb. I won’t rehash Catone’s posts, but he outlines some very big cons to adding video comments.
TechCrunch was the first to add video comments to their site, a move that has been imitated and duplicated by many. TechCrunch is doing it to promote Seesmic, but who’s going to fall for video comments? Here are three reasons why most readers won’t.
Text is Faster
Video comments are, in general, a major time waster compared to text. Thinking of what to say, recording it, uploading it, and then watching it takes up a lot of time for the average internet user. You’re better off saving everyone some time by typing out your comment. Readers barely have enough time to read an entire blog post, let alone sit and watch a video with a response that could’ve been typed out.
Seesmic Decline
Video blogging, or vlogging, has yet to become a hit from a user point of view. While people consume many videos, they aren’t creating as many. While active users of Seesmic may find video comments to be a nice addition, I can’t help but ask, how many are still actively using Seesmic?
Not For The Average User
If you think video comments are made for the average user, I’ll step on your big toe.
- The average user is not a visitor of TechCrunch.
- The average user is not going to leave a video comment.
- The average user would not be excited about this.
Not Revolutionary
This isn’t a game changer and If you plan on jumping on the bandwagon, I recommend you don’t. I don’t own a webcam, so you won’t have to worry about seeing me participate. Will you?