Video is the new conversation

Video is the new conversation

by: Wayne MacPhail

Last Friday I was part of a team that brought you a live rabbletv event. It was an hour and one half long show from the Centre for Social Innovation (CSI) in Toronto. We broadcast it in real time to a small video player on the front of rabble.ca. Viewers could send us live feedback in a chat window as they watched. Don't worry if you missed it, there'll be lots more rabbletv content coming to you soon.

But I'm not going to focus on that video now, not directly. Instead, I want to take you to a sidewalk on Queen Street West in Toronto about two hours before the CSI coverage. My rabbletv cohost, Roz Allen, and I were schlepping gear down to Spadina Avenue. I raised my cellphone in front of us and we recorded a short, blocky video letting folks know we were on our way to the shoot.

As we continued down the street I emailed the video to a social media site called utterz that, in turn, shared it with my friends on twitter and my microblog on tumblr. So, before we got halfway down Queen, my video had made its way wirelessly to the Web and could be watched and commented on by Twitter citizens all over the world.

That's just one example of how real time and near realtime video is inserting itself into online conversations. In fact, video is becoming the new virtual conversation.

My little mobile cellphone clip was nothing. Videobloggers Steve Garfield, Robert Scoble and Laura Fitton are all one-upping it, big time. Using a service called qik and a Nokia N95 cellphone they broadcast pretty good quality video live from the palms of their hands. Scoble took real time mobile video broadcasting to Davos and MacWorld earlier this year, Garfield covered the New England primaries from the streets of Boston from his cell. Laura gives her audience glimpses into her life. Viewers could enter questions and comments in a chat window beside Garfield's live video online. That text appeared on Steve's cellphone screen in real time, as he was filming. Audience becomes interviewer. The N95 is not yet available in Canada and Canadian data plans would make it prohibitively expensive to broadcast live video in this country. Hope that changes soon. Rogers, get off your ass, Nokia, push them.

Meanwhile, over on a new video conversation service, ooVoo, up to six webcam owners can talk to and see one another. It's just like the Jetsons' videophone, except you can do live video conference calls, free. And, on Yahoo! Live, you can do a live video show and videochat with audience members who can also chip in comments in a text chat window. Dozens of other videosharing sites, like Seesmic make it easy for you to create original video content from your phone, laptop, desktop or PDA and to comment on videos others create.

So, yes, getting video up on the web couldn't be much easier for everyone including nonprofits and activist groups. But, my point in writing about it is this: It's too easy to think about video as being what it always has been, a one-way broadcast from creator to audience. A lot of organizations will use it for just that purpose, and they will be missing the point.

The real win for your organization will be to turn that video into a conversation, not a broadcast. When video becomes a catalyst for community and conversation it makes perfect sense online. When it doesn't its just outdated shovelware. These days I'm paying a lot of attention to services like mogulus, which we use for rabbletv, oovoo, utterz, seismic and Yahoo! Live. They're two-way video streets that allow you to fold your audience into your multimedia content. You can use them to collect feedback, stories, content and coverage from the folks that are interested in your cause, your own story and your brand.

It's important to pay attention to this shift and to adapt to it early. Large corporations and mainstream media outlets will be slow to catch on to the shift of video from broadcast to conversation. All too often they're interested in using online tools to get out their own messages, and control their own spin. Groups that let the audience turn the cameras on themselves and help amplify the diverse voices around them will be early winners. Those that don't should probably pick another medium: television, for example. The revolution will not be broadcast.

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