Have you ever thought text is becoming a thing of the past? Videos are becoming such a normality on the Internet, that the written word just doesn’t do it any more.
So, to that end, Seesmic, a video micro-blogging application for the Web, is now available as a WordPress plugin, which will instantly make it available to millions of new users.
What the new Seesmic plugin offers is the chance for bloggers and writers on websites to easily record videos for their posts, as well as the opportunity for readers to comment using video rather than text.
Seesmic Founder Talks
Loic Le Meur, Founder and CEO of Seesmic said:
”We warmly welcome WordPress users to the Seesmic community. With over 70 million blogs worldwide, there is always a need for bloggers to differentiate themselves, and to engage their audience in different ways.”
“Seesmic enables people to engage in video conversations, straight from their webcams, and now also straight from their blogs. Now, most bloggers can create and participate in live video conversations directly with their readers.”
Viddler Got There First
It’s not the first company to offer such a service though, as Viddler released a similar plugin earlier this year which does almost exactly the same thing.
I’m all for the ability of bloggers to be able to easily and conveniently use video in posts, as that could massively help create a conversation, and improve the flow of debate. Video comments though are a slightly more complicated issue.
Making Life Easier For Bloggers
For bloggers, this makes the process much easier, as they will no longer need to record and upload a video to a site such as YouTube, and then go through the rigmarole of embedding it within a post.
Instead, by simply using a few options from within WordPress, they will be able record a video, and post it as simply as writing a paragraph of text.
To Allow Or Not?
Commenters go through almost exactly the same process, but whether to enable them to do so isn’t so clear cut.
Mainly because when moderating comments, you’ll then have to watch videos to check for spam/inappropriate content. This is much more time consuming than scanning a paragraph or two of text.
Not a problem on small blogs, or websites with a low readership, but when you come to sites such as Techcrunch, who have already enabled the plugin, that means someone will have the job of watching potentially hundreds of videos.
Moderation Problem
It’s nice to see video getting a foothold on another rung of the Internet, but in terms of usability, it may prove hard to keep up with in the long term.
You can download the plugin from here, and I’d recommend experimenting with it by all means. It’s very useful, and could revolutionise blog commenting, but not until a better system of moderating the videos is introduced.
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