Maybe Video on the Net Is Going Mainstream?
This past week I’ve had two different brushes with people who think video over the Internet will be the next big thing. First I had a video conversation with the CEO of SightSpeed about, among other things, how big video is going to be. Last night I had finished editing a piece Carolyn Schuk had wrote about Jeff Pulver thinks Video on the Net being the next big thing.
There are aspects of video that are going to be big for sure–think TV shows on iTunes Music Store or Bittorrent. However, I have my doubts as to whether or not video communication will take off. Considering that we’ve been hearing about video phones for, oh, half a cenutry now, I’m still trying to figure out what it’s going to take for video communications to take off in the mass market.
Something happened this evening that is making me question my belief that video isn’t quite ready yet. My wife said the S-word to me–Skype. A friend of hers, who isn’t particularly technical, is using Skype with video so her daughter can “see” and “talk” to her father, who lives in another state. I think that counts as the first non-technical person I know that is actually doing video chat over the Net. Maybe there is something to this video thing….
