Smile! You're on Skype!

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Linda tells me, "I would never do video." Dina says, "I feel naked!"

For many the web is a place of fear: fear of being flamed, fear of being "hit on" by the opposite sex, spammed, infected with a virus, or of someone hacking into your computer. To protect themselves many users hide behind NAT Routers, double firewalls and strive for anonymity hiding behind pseudonyms and avatars. Trust takes a longer time to build in this environment. It might take weeks or even months weeks before you share a pic of youself with what was a brief time ago a complete stranger. Given the potential intimacy provided by live video this behaviour seems to suggest that video will be in low demand or its use constrained.

But other real-life examples tell a different story. Video is hot. 500,000 Skype fans downloaded Video4IM and vSkype in the first 30 days of the beta release of both these products. WebCams are hot too. This ChannelTimes article (server down at time of posting) claims Skype's partner Logitech shipped its 25th million webcam this year (37 % of the world market according to research firm IDC).

Is all this activity about moms and grandchildren? Or is sharing real-time images of you and your environment simply cool. Does video dramatically enhance voice and Skype Chat? So what is the story here? And what is your story? Is your video pic a real-time emoticon?

Robin Batt's story covers both sides, "I get more of a feeling of a connection with Kay, she's based in Italy, we speak daily, IM all the time. If she leaves her camera on, I know when she's there, I can see when she's frowning/laughing/doing something else. Although, Kay doesn't like it because it makes her self-conscious."

"There is a big opportunity in making cute little apps that let you mess with your appearance. I'd actually like to find a developer who can and build a couple. Could be either really sophisticated photographic touch up or could be really easy to build little cartoon cutouts like, today's Friday, I've got my real face, but my party hat on or or, you could have fake backdrops so if I'm talking with a client I put a fake office backdrop on so I look like I'm in a smarter environment than I really am.

I think video will be about fun long before about doing mission critical business much like mobile, emoticons, ringtones etc. Mobile operators ALWAYS get it wrong they are only just learning now that mobile data is about killing time, not saving time. That's especially important in the mobile environment waiting for a friend in a bar, waiting for the bus, dentist, taking the train somewhere, even if using business apps - like stock tickers - you're doing it more to kill time than to save time that's my philosophy anyway.

I think video is the same as mobile. It will be more about social interaction - friends goofing around...than business communications...in the beginning. Killing time and goofing around become the drivers for the mobile and video market until the deeper uses get discovered.

And until people get familiar with it...or until it becomes so popular on a social level that it starts to virally pervade businesses anyway...so they decide to harness it so they can control it...and it becomes an enterprise app (like IM did). Plus I don’t think goofing around is necessarily shallower. Nothing wrong with goofing around.

oh, and porn of course - always an early driver of new tech. Although that's an interesting one because the phone/online/text sex industry benefits from the fact that the buyer cant see the 'hot chick' to validate if she really is hot. That changes in the video environment, obviously."

I wonder if Robin has it right with her comment on hot chicks? I wonder whether in fact all chicks are hotter in a video call than a voice call. Are there not more "emoticons" happening in video? Doesn’t live video provide more to feed your imagination; not less?

Tell us about your experience with video. What "deeper uses" than goofing around will make Skype Video a pervasive application? Is it a killer-app for job interviews? Does Skype video enhance voice and chat messaging for you? In what ways?

Are you afraid of Skype video; are you videophobic?