Video Messaging Show Notes
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Transcription:
Hey, It's Jazmin Butler and this is Living digital. Where we talk about apps, technology, marketing and innovation. As I said, I'm Jazmin, digital resident and explorer. Today we'll be stepping on the battlefield of the video messaging war.
In the past year this we've seen this functionality with apps like Instagram messenger in 2013 and Vine messages earlier this year. As well as lesser known apps like Glide and Blab. Let's start with a basic question. What's the point of video messaging. Well, It's a step closer to humanity than a twitter handle or an avatar. 2 It's efficient. You only need voice text to send "you look so pregnant instead of you look so pretty" ONE time before you realize video is probably the easiest way to get your point across when you are on the go. And 3. Authentic emotion. I love gifs and emojis as much as the next person but a side eye tends to carry more weight when it's actually your eye.
I chose video messaging as today’s topic after a friend of mine, who happens to be in the military described how he kept in touch with his family. He pulled out his phone, opened an app and pressed "play", it's a video of his sister in her dorm room describing what was new in her life. about 30 second later a video slides from the right and his brother, holding a baby describes his latest adventures in fatherhood, after that, another video glides on screen and his father who I know to give amazing pep talks, gives them advice, cracks some jokes expresses pride in all of them. So...as a person with a close family this really resonated with me. My friend told me the name of the app was Glide, which is a video messenger that allows you to send and receive short video messages that can be seen live (as you're recording) or later (like a text message). The sequence I just described was the chain of interaction my friend had with his parents and siblings, who are spread throughout the country .So it's a great way to relive the interactions you have with you friends and family. And as wonderful as that is...Glide, founded in 2012, is nowhere to be found media wise. I'm sure that's why so many startups like to replace i's with y's and remove e's all together.
Of course Vine and Instagram have messaging functionality but those apps may be more suitable for those who want to share artsy/creative videos. In early 2013 Skype rolled out their video messaging service but it was marketed as a premium feature. In Apple's June 2014 keynote for iOS 8, it was revealed that it would be easier to share video messages with an added tap and hold functionality. Although, there is an advantage to having a video chat session that's a separate entity from your text conversations. Video takes up plenty of space and the weekly back and forth you and your best friend have during Scandal might prevent you from downloading some of the amazing apps that I mention Living Digital. If you watched the keynote then you also know that that they've added a self-destruct function. Competing directly with snap chat. The downside is everyone involved has to have an iphone for the functionality to work.
More recently, Facebook messenger added functionality that lets you do on the fly tap and hold recording for up to 15 seconds. With over 1.2 billion users, Facebook definitely has an opportunity to dominate this space.
At the end of the day, messaging apps are becoming more and more popular. If they succeed at making video messaging easy, less of a memory sponge, and seamless within the mobile experience, I think many more people will take advantage of this type of communication.
As always I hope this information has been helpful. Thanks for listening.