SpectatorBytes

Other than the interesting presentations by current industry newsmakers and catching up with industry friends, one of the most valuable things that I took away from Kara Swisher and Walt Mossberg’s D7 conference was a Flip Mino HD camera that I received as part of my gift bag. This simple yet  sophisticated video camera has made sharing memorable experiences with friends incredibly “frictionless.”

This has led me to think about the potential for another explosion in real-time, “social video” sharing over the next few years. Today, social networking activity evolved primarily around “status updates” as a universal behavior.  While sharing pictures and video has also been part of social networking in recent years, the behavior has not yet turned universal. Video sharing has primarily involved TV show clips rather than “social video clips.” However, as new devices and software tools make the producing, editing and uploading video process much more “frictionless,” real-time, I expect social video broadcasting will increase in popularity within social networks.

Video is a powerful mechanism of communication.  I realized this several years ago through a service that a local TV station offered in my hometown. The channel set up video kiosks around town that allowed people to create short-form confessional-like content. The channel would package this video and integrate it into their programming. These videos allowed local community members to discuss social concerns, express grievances with government officials, use their singing talents to complain about city services and in some cases embody the culture of the city via jokes or poetry. The success of this initiative was driven by the fact that the process of creating these videos was completely painless. The local TV network had set up kiosks all over town where any individual could easily record their rant of the day.

Recently, several signs have heralded the advent of this new real-time, video era. A new generation of tools designed to increase the use of video as a form of communication have been introduced. 12seconds.tv is one of the first services which aims to provide a “Twitter-like” video service that enables people to easily broadcast video “snacks’ to the their communities of friends and followers.  I must confess that I found myself unable to think of anything that could in the 12 second window. Facebook’s partnership with UStream, which makes it easier for celebrities to stream video live from their profiles, appears to be another sign around real-time/live video broadcasting.

As video recording-capable phones are added to the mix, real-time, video sharing will accelerate. There are new tools such as Posterous that aim to make uploading videos via iPhones to social networks pretty frictionless. Several other services like Twitvid and Tweettube, are making sharing videos on Twitter as simple as Twitpic has done with photos.

Thus, I expect that over time the same way that people take a few minutes to “update their status,” they may decide to point and shoot at something they see with some voiceover commentary. Needless to say, “video” will always require a bit more involvement than “text.”

Nevertheless, I expect continuous innovation in this area and thus new tools and devices emerge that will enable the process of real-time, video broadcasting much more frictionless than it has ever been.

In the meantime, I will be honing my video communication skills with the help of my Flip Mino HD.