Video commenting goes mainstream

The Standard — Sun, 27 Apr 2008 20:31:18 -0700

Back on Marh 18th, Mashable began offering video commenting on its posts via Viddler. Shortly thereafter, Techcrunch followed suit, piggybacking on Seesmic's technology.

While we're obviously still in the early stages of this trend, it seems to be an area of great promise (and one that Viddler and Seesmic no doubt plan to capitalize on.) Nonetheless, plenty of people like ReadWriteWeb's Josh Catone aren't convinced that video comments are a good idea.

Will video commenting ever make its way into the mainstream?

This is a prediction that at least ONE of the following media properties will roll out video commenting by Novermber 3, 2008. The roll-out need not be site-wide, nor need it be permanent (i.e. video commenting on an experimental or trial basis still counts, and/or if the NYT just implemented video commenting within the technology section only, that would count too.) That is, we're just looking for a foot in the door, so to speak, as opposed to a full-blown implementation, for favorable judgment. The candidate media properties in question are: The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Fortune, Time, and Newsweek. It seems like the NYT is the most likely, given its purchase of Blogrunner and subsequent incorporation of that company's capabilities into its technology section -- Saul Hansell seems to be bullish on the effect of these sorts of tools.

Note: We thought about including WIRED, CNET, and even ReadWriteWeb among the "candidates". Just purely out of curiosity, would appreciate your comments below, regardless of how you bet, as to whether these other tech-only properties are likely to follow in the steps of Mashable, Techcrunch, and others.