MappingTheWeb //

I know I’ve criticized many services recently, but I get upset with poor judgment. Video comments from Seesmic are no exception. I see no value in them. In fact, I find them counterproductive and downright annoying.

Comments are meant to be in text form for many reasons:

• They can be crawled and indexed by the search engines.
• Spam can be controlled.
• They can quickly be parsed over, allowing you to decide what is pertinent to you.
• They load faster.
• Text tends to be more focused and concise.

And the list goes on… After 2 minutes of logical thought, it should appear obvious that video comments are a bad idea. If you still aren’t convinced, Scrivs does a great job of outlining the downfalls in an entertaining manner.

Video comments are nothing more than glorified ego trips. Their page-cluttering, attention-seeking, time-wasting nature doesn’t sit well with many. Mark Evans expressed a similar dissatisfaction and has a good discussion going on.

I have nothing in particular against Seesmic. In fact, I’ve heard very good things about the product itself. I’m just vouching for them to stay away from video comments. Competing as the “Twitter of video” seems ambitious and lucrative enough.

My basic premise is this: if you cannot express yourself in text, perhaps you need to rethink your comment in the first place. If you have a long-winded response, write your own post and provide a trackback. Assuming that other users want to see and hear your opinion is naive and vain.

Tags: comments, conversations, discussions, mark evans, opinion, scrivs, search, seesmic, twitter, video