Found this video of Jesse Schell’s presentation initially via Om Malik and have to agree with him that this is definitely worth 28 minutes and 19 seconds of your life. Just a great overall presentation and insight into how everyday life is becoming a game. After you watch the video, check out the Dunnit! iPhone App and Booyah iPhone App and you’ll see that we’re already in the future Schell’s predicting…
This is just amazing…though we work in emerging media and technology every day, it’s great to see technology put to use in innovative ways.
Ebert lost his lower jaw to cancer and thus his ability to speak. The company, Cerepro, was able to take digital voice samples from his DVD commentaries and other recordings. More info here…
Q&A: OK Go’s Lead Singer Tells Us Secrets of the Band’s Geeky Videos – You can’t make ‘viral’ videos, but these guys come as close as it gets to tapping into content that will become viral…
Mobile Marketing Watch has a great round-up of all the methods by which you can now donate via mobile to help victions of the Chile Earthquake. Many of these methods are using the same shortcode system the Red Cross implemented with great success for victims of the Haiti Earthquake just a few weeks ago. Interestingly though, I still have yet to see if the Red Cross is using the same mobile shortcode system for Chile that they used for Haiti. Twitter has been very active with tweets saying “Text CHILE to 90999″ assuming that the Red Cross has this setup, but I have yet to see this officially announced online anywhere. I’ll update this post if/when I ever hear back from the Red Cross. In the meantime though, here’s the round-up of other shortcodes mentioned above:
• Text “CHILE” to 20222 to donate $10 on behalf of World Vision.
• Text “CHILE” to 52000 to donate $10 on behalf of the Salvation Army
• Text “SAVE” to 20222 to donate $10 on behalf of Save the Children Federation, Inc.
• Text “CHILE” to 85944 to donate $10 on behalf of International Medical Corp.
• Text “4CHILE” to 50555 to donate $10 on behalf of Convoy of Hope
• Text “CHILE” to 50555 to donate $10 on behalf of Friends of the World Program
• Text “REBUILD” to 50555 to donate $10 on behalf of Friends of the Operation USA
So the numbers above show that there is avid consumer interest for broadcasts that happen over the net, in realtime and streamed. But what of Interactive Video Conferencing? Though the events above offer social media integration they aren’t ‘true’ interactive video conferencing events. To date, most of these livestream broadcasts allow people to chat with one another about the event as it’s happening or to pose questions that a moderator will ask the subject of the livestream itself. But is this true ‘interactivity’? I would argue a definitive no.
Skype and live 1-to-1 video conferencing systems offer interaction between connected hosts in a live, connected video feed. So there’s already an inherent difference between the current examples of ‘livestreams’ and the systems in place for ‘video conferences’. Conferences being the keyword that implies basic live video interaction between stream members. But, apart from making headlines on Techcrunch or Mashable, most videoconferencing and livestreaming hasn’t achieved a level of critical mass adoption yet.
Twitter was the catalyst to help microblogging explode onto the scene and even went so far as to create an ecosystem around it – url shorteners, service clients (Tweetdeck, Seesmic) and so on. Similar patterns are emerging with the recent massive growth Chatroulette is experiencing. Part of this is due to curiosity (like every new trend) but I would wager that Chatroulette itself has just become the catalyst for interactive video conferencing and will accelerate adoption of video conferencing by the masses.
Here in no particular order are a few stats on the webcam and videoconferencing ecosystem:
Markets for webcams at $1.8 billion in 2008 are anticipated to reach $3.2 billion by 2015. You can see by this stat alone that by 2015, most new computers should be webcam ready or have an integrated webcam installed.
As of March 2009, 40% of video uploads on Facebook were via webcam. I would guesstimate that by now this number is in the 55-65% range as webcam usage has most likely continued to gain traction on the Facebook platform.
Gartner predicts that 200 million people will pay for desktop videoconferencing by 2015. I’m not sure how pay is being defined since it will be extremely hard to change current consumer mindset as Skype and like services are either ad-supported or free to use for video conferencing.
Note: Chatroulette is a new video chat service that can be very NSFW (Not Safe For Work). It is suggested you read here before going to the site so you know what to expect.
So these are ‘official stats’ but what of Chatroulette? Since the service has only been out a few months, there’s not much in way of official stats but here’s what I’ve been able to dig up or have seen after using the service:
Traffic has almost doubled in a week from 20,000 concurrent users on 2/13 to almost 40,000 on 2/20
Approximately 75% of users seem to fall into the 18-24 age group.
Though there is still quite a bit of obscene content, it seems to have diminished ratio wise with the larger traffic numbers. Maybe more ‘normal’ people are starting to use the service
An ecosystem around Chatroulette is already developing. The 1st out of the gate – software that allows you to modify your live video stream. Manycam is one such system which allows for Augmented Reality-like features such as applying animations to your face through facial tracking.
The most important observation – clones of the service are already appearing in record time – Redditroulette, Tinychat and others.
So what Chatroulette has shown is that there is definitely consumer interest in and a market for interactive video conferencing – especially with the Gen Y demographic. This is not surprising as both Gen Y and Gen Z are demographic sets that will be growing up with these types of interactive systems in place (similar to initial text based chat systems that were in place for Gen X.)
Furthermore, Chatroulette has shown that a simple UI and Flash based video conferencing system can work – efficiently and effectively. This probably isn’t good news for startups and tech companies that have been trying to sell 5-6 figure teleconferencing platforms and systems to businesses. Expect to start seeing ‘generated backlash’ against the Flash-based technology even though the genie is already out of the bottle.
Finally, this recent surge in traffic with Chatroulette shows that desktop based video conferencing only has room for growth. As adoption grows, we’ll also see more advanced uses of video conferencing which include more advanced interactivity. This is the main reason we developed ZugSTAR technology to allow Augmented Reality based interactivity between video streams.
In summary, it remains to be seen if Chatroulette itself is a fad or the next Twitter. However, what is has shown is that interactive video conferencing is here to stay and is positioning itself to be the de facto method of communication very soon.
Any comments, hit me up on Twitter @kobrakai or leave comments below.
Sure Chatroulette can be a negative experience, but this video helps show the lighter, humorous side of the new video chat phenomenon. It’s fun to watch a simple video make so many people smile…(video found via @luckthelady)
If you haven’t heard of Chatroulette yet, you might want to read here first before visiting…
We Are Organized Chaos (WAOC) is Zugara’s (www.zugara.com) interactive marketing and advertising blog where we’ll be featuring some great projects and discussing upcoming trends in the digital world. Work — good and bad — will be critiqued. Hope you’ll enjoy reading our insights and thoughts on interactive.
