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Facebook delivers video-chat for the masses

by alec on July 8, 2011

Like a lot of other folks, on Wednesday I was playing with the newly launched video chat capability on Facebook.  Done in partnership with Skype, it brings video chat to the masses via the 750 million Facebook users out there.

First I chatted with Larry Lisser in San Francisco.  Not a good experience.  Grainy, laggy video, and bad audio synch problems.  If this is what Facebook video chat is all about, I thought to myself, it’s going to be a failure.  Next I talked with Dan York and his two year old daughter Cassie.  Great experience, and entertaining as all get out due to young Cassie’s antics on the screen.  Don’t tell Mrs. Saunders, but that little flirt was blowing me kisses the whole time!  And the video was wonderful and in synch.  Clearly the quality problems with Larry were simply network related.  And then I chatted with Jim Courtney, where we quickly started digging through the nitty gritty of the user experience.

What do I love about Facebook video chat?

  1. It’s a little thing, but the window pops up on screen directly below my center-mounted web cam.  It forces me to look into the camera when i’m chatting, which means that I’m meeting the other person’s eye, rather than looking at the screen.
  2. I can leave a video-mail message if the other person isn’t available.  Why isn’t this in the standard Skype application?
  3. It’s SUPER easy to set up and use. For many people, Skype has an intimidating UI with a lot of options.  Facebook video chat is pure simplicity. I could see my wife, or my brother-in-law, both of whom have resisted Skype until now, using this.

It’s probably not going to steal away today’s Skype user.  The experience isn’t as rich, quality isn’t as high, and you have to be logged into Facebook to receive calls.  Instead, Facebook video chat is a great compliment to Skype.

Bottom line: I don’t agree with Om Malik that this is a one-sided deal in Facebook’s favour.  Like Andy Abramson, I think this is a good thing for Skype and for Facebook.  Facebook gets a feature that will allow it to compete against Google +, and Skype gains an audience that they might not have otherwise had access to.  It won’t be long before there are a billion video chatters on the planet, all using Skype technology, and that’s what Skype’s management wants and needs.

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Post image for Bre.ad: half baked, and maybe already toast.

Bre.ad: half baked, and maybe already toast.

by alec on June 19, 2011

Bre.ad, the new link shortener promoted used by Lady Gaga, is a bad idea.  If you haven’t seen it yet, the quick recap of bre.ad is as follows:

  1. Shorten links by simply navigating to http://bre.ad/{your URL}.  It’s a little easier and simpler than visiting the bit.ly or ow.ly site.
  2. When visitors click on your bre.ad link, a “toast” created by you is shown for 5 seconds before the link it refers to is shown.   You can create an inventory of toasts that promote your own favorite sites or URLs, and each time you share a link, you advertise another site.

Try it by clicking this bre.ad generated short link.  It will show you a toast I created from my about.me profile, and then link you to back to the home page for this site: http://bre.ad/082tnk

So why don’t I like it?

Bre.ad will likely sell part of the inventory of “toasts” that they maintain to third parties. Their privacy policy explicitly says “Bread may use some of the information collected in order to customize the advertisements to your interests and preferences.” They also have a liberal cookie policy, collecting information about who clicks on each and every link (not just toasts) generated by their system.  Their terms of service require you to register for the site, and give them the demographic info they need to target you.

Bre.ad haven’t said what they intend to do with this information.  However, the information they’re collecting, when combined with their technology, enables a plague of interstitial ads to be generated during ordinary content navigation.

I’m not sure bre.ad is going to succeed in any case.  Social sharing is now the norm.  What web site doesn’t have a “tweet this” or “share on facebook” button on each page already? URL shorteners are now so ubiquitous that it’s actually more work to create a bre.ad link than other ways.  In order to succeed, bre.ad needs to become embedded in those sites, rather than focus on consumers.

Bre.ad:  a half-baked idea? burnt toast? (rim-shot, please!)

CLARIFICATION: I received a note from Alan Chan, Bre.ad founder and CEO, clarifying exactly the relationship that Lady Gaga has with Bre.ad.  Alan’s note read, in part “Both Lady Gaga and 50 Cent are early adopters who have been known to send out Bre.ad links, but neither individual is an investor, endorser, supporter or a backer of our company.”  Thanks for making that clear, Alan.

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