Video gets social on Facebook

March 6th, 2010 | Leave a comment

Making video easy…is hard. But it is starting to happen and adding a new dimension to socialization on the Internet.

On the social web and on Facebook, the trend towards sending and sharing video is growing at enormous rates. Internet TV viewing in the US alone has increased more than 50% year over year. But there is a difference between sharing a video on YouTube, viewing a concert on Facebook through Ustream and what innovative startups are calling social video.

The social aspect of video is blurring the boundaries between real life and real experiences online. But more interesting, it is letting people connect with celebrities, brands, politicians and leaders in a powerful new way. This is the game changer.

The state of art for socialization around video today is in three buckets.

With YouTube, you capture a video moment, upload it and share it by sending it around. Fun stuff and we all feel good when we get comments like ”Looking good” or ”Great vacation” or “Can’t wait to see you.” Similar to a video post on your Facebook wall. While richer content than a photo, not really that different.

With the streaming companies like Ustream, Livestream and JustinTV, we are finally getting events and shows delivered digitally to us on our laptops and phones inside of Facebook. It’s cool to watch a show, comment on the wall, or Tweet out what your thinking to your friends. Similar to Social TV. Their goal is to create a virtual living room or concert hall around the shared experience. The event is streamed, the comments are to your friends via chat. This is less about changing socialization than about changing the delivery from analog to digital.

The third, more embryonic and more interesting is what is termed social video and is finding a home on Facebook.  In the spirit of full disclosure, I am an Advisor to Vpype, a social video startup. Social video, from Vpype’s application, lets an individual or a brand or businesses create a video conversation with their friends or fans on Facebook. You use your Friends Lists and Event Manager to decide where and when, you broadcast live and share the broadcast channel with your audience who can ask questions, interact and shape the content of what you are presenting or talking about.

So social video is a two-way, one-to-many shared channel of communications where the broadcaster interacts live, unscripted with their audience. The entire event is saved, shareable and reviewable. The content of this video conversation is the combination of the broadcasters video and the viewers’ comments. The sum of both defines the experience. Think of a live TV show with an audience that interacts freely with the host.

OK…so we have a live two-way channel between brands and fans. It’s authentic because you can see the broadcaster. It’s real because it’s live and free flowing. And it’s more intimate and compelling because it’s personal. Yes, this is where real life and real conversations online start to come together.

But the game changing power of this comes from something special that is only available on the social web. And that is connecting with stars (from your local politician to a movie star) in real time in a personal way. Think for a second about Twitter and one of the many reasons why it’s so powerful. You can message Ashton Kutcher or John Mayer and potentially get a response back from them in seconds. For millions this is beyond a wow experience. This could also be Gavin Newsom, Mayor of San Francisco, your Senator, Yankee baseball slugger or your local celebrity chef.

With social video, this connection between brand and fan could become a video conversation on Facebook from a Fan Page or a personal profile. With these celebrities talking to their fans or customers through their Fan Pages directly.

Vpype’s Live Broadcaster is pioneering an interactive video conversation application for Facebook brands and businesses. I will do a follow-up blog post on early beta testers for Vpype as they come online, which include a Hollywood Screen Writers Pitch Contest, Evangelical Ministers, Auto shops, DJs, virtual online assistants and one public company planning on doing its Earnings Call via the social video product.

This is what is starting to happen on Facebook. Having a cloud-based architecture, a global massive audience that grows by 500,000 a day and a proven model for friending and socialization makes it a natural. Not to mention monetization from its advertising model. I’ve blogged on this here.

Today, social video is a conversation defined in a video and gravitar-based chat environment. Voice channels and split screen (Larry King-like) environments are being tested now. And with 4G networks within reach, the paradigm will go mobile for broadcasting as well as interactive video chatting.

It is still early days for this dream but it is really starting to happen. It’s empowering for all of us to be on the brink of another chasm-leaping breakthrough in technology and behavioral change.

As much as I’ve embraced the social web and Facebook today, this leap is really something to get excited about.

I’ll be online broadcasting and trying this one out.

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  • What I feel is future will be about putting everything as an atom on web and people can plug in to see it, now the search engines will have to have a search facility for live streams, tv channels, tv shows etc ....

    I see a great change here and life becoming too complex, I still remember the video "paradoxes of choices"
  • Hi Aji and thanks for your comments.

    Searching video is slow but coming and will bring a massive new source of data for us.

    However, I don't think that more data and more venues for search necessarily bring more complexity...to me they just bring more choice and more opportunity.
  • Stefanie
    Do you see social video replacing webinars?
  • Hi Stef

    On Facebook,yes certainly.

    The reason is that a webinar is an opted-in activity and with that type of environment I don't see any reason why a video stream with interactive chat shouldn't work perfectly.

    For example, if you want to have a 'webinar like' connection with the fans on your fan page, this would be ideal. There is no reason not to move to this type of solution.
  • "The social aspect of video is blurring the boundaries between real life and real experiences online." -- I've been saying something very similar: "bridging the gap between online and offline activity"

    VPYPE is very interesting, and I cannot wait until this goes mobile. For the past few months, I've been experimenting with iPhone video edits for my snowboard publication (www.ridethebeav.com) called "From the Hill" where we film down the mountain and upload to our social space while on the lift. Using a variety of otherwise unrelated services/apps we are able to deliver "real time" snowboarding to our FB Fans and Twitter followers using Tumblr for deployment.

    Now the iPhone all alone is not the best video camera for several obvious reasons, but there is a new product called OWLE (Optical Widgets for life Enhancement) that acts as a holster for the iPhone that also adds service for interchangeable lenses, an audio condenser mic, etc. Check it out: http://getowle.com -- As a disclaimer I do want to mention that I have recently become commercially affilated with them.

    Have a look at some of the snowboard edits we've done. The quality is astounding!: http://fromthehill.ridethebeav.com

    We have also tried to broadcast live with this iPhone set up, but using QIK and USTREAM are just not there yet (well AT&T 3g is not yet there).

    It seems to me that VPYPE might be something for us to investigate for next winter. I'd love to help beta test from an "Action Sports" perspective if the opportunity arises.

    And I would really be interested in showing you some more of what we are doing. Feel free to hit me up: rich at secretstache.com
  • Hi Rich

    Great videos! As a snow fanatic for skiing, I'm liking what I'm seeing and makes me anxious to get back on the mountain in a few weeks.

    I'll do two things: 1) pass on your info to the product maven at Vpype so that you can get involved in the mobile Beta in the June/July timeframe and 2) check out your work and ping you.

    Thanks much for your comments and ideas.
  • This area has plenty of potential, and your post captures the tipping point features that show tech is nearly ideal for social video.

    How does VPype differentiate from Ustream.tv where I can share videos and chat with friends? (this is the type of question I look forward to asking in video interviews)
  • Playing with the intersection of new technology and social behavior is fun stuff Mark.

    Ustream (and I'm a fan!) is like SocialTV, where you watch and share your comments 'about' the video with friends. Like tweeting to friends while watching a show on standard TV. Social approaches like Vpype are trying to make the video the conversation itself, where the comments define the content of the stream. Kind of like what comments do in a Disqus thread.
  • This is great - something I want to bring to clients immediately. We are still in "phase 1" - film and post. Maybe a live chat on occasion. Would love to test this to get to the next level. Thanks for sharing!
  • Thnx for stopping by Jen.

    Big brand clients have to get past the idea of 'porting' over old media programs to social media platforms but once they do, video conversations as customer service, contest engines, and 'town hall' types of meetings will I think take hold.

  • Very well-written Arnold. You make some very compelling arguments for asymmetric real-time video broadcasting over SNs.

    I'd be very keen to see this in action, and can already envison of a number of very interesting use cases.
  • Hi David

    It's early days for this paradigm but everything is in place for this to start to take shape. I'll be sharing the most interesting of the use cases as they start to be public. Broadcasters have the option to make their broadcasts private so there is more going on than I can see or share at any given time.
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