Thursday, July 7, 2011

The Video Chat Revolution is On!

Gone are the days where you had to be in instant messenger clients -- YM, MSN, Skype -- to be able to do P2P (peer-to-peer) video calls. Then there was Userplane which allowed video chat rooms making everything more social.. and leaning towards kinky.


Over the past few days, we've seen the launches of Google+ with Hangout, and just today Facebook's video chat feature developed together with Skype. This brings video chat to a tipping point where it's accessible by virtually anybody on the social network graph right from your web browser.


How will this change social? Here are some of my predictions:

  • Video calls for work meetings & collaboration can become the norm very soon. Does this mean more virtual offices? Less "call-in-sick" excuses?
  • The return of talking: typing words to communicate now becomes secondary; non-verbal communication should be able to enhance conversations
  • Video cam vanity: This is obvious for long-time video chat users, but for the general public, looking good on cam will now be of more importance
  • More fake social network profiles for the indecent uses of video chat. 'Nuff said.
What other kind of social changes do you see happening with the introduction of this technology on this scale? I'd love to hear from you.

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