There’s no doubt that great advances are being made in the world of online video, to make it easier for users to upload their own content. Twitvid for example, announced today that they have just launched the first video sharing application for Twitter, on the blackberry (free to use). Services such as Qik are leaders in their field, and seem to have been built with mobile streaming in mind and have convinced many tech savvy users to become early adopters. Yet I believe that mainstream adoption of video uploads is still a way off. Despite it being an inherently social medium, it has not made the same advances as text or photo.

The barriers to entry for video uploads are still clearly an obstacle. Despite apps such as Twitvid, if you don’t have an internet phone, it is incredibly time consuming to film a video clip and upload it online. To many, it simply isn’t worth the effort. Photo doesn’t seem susceptible to the same limitations however. Comparing site traffic for Twitpic,  to 12seconds for example (touted as the ‘Twitter for video’) shows the extent of this.

Twitvid follows a similar pattern

The process involved in sharing a video or photo online aren’t too disssimiliar, so what’s happening here?  Why is video remaining significantly more unsociable? More businesses are using video and I would readily recommend it as a method to make a brand more sociable. It is the individual use of video that is yet to take off and this can’t all be blamed on technology.

Video doesn’t easily lend itself to as many situations as photo. If I write a tweet about where I am on holiday for example, I would always be more likely to use a photo, rather than video. I wouldn’t trust my camera skill for one, nor would I know how long to film it for. I wouldn’t want to make assumptions about how inclined my followers are to learn about where I am on holiday.

You also have to question how comfortable someone is in front of the camera. Most people have no problem with leaving a comment on a Techcrunch article for example, yet significantly fewer utilised their video comment system, which was powered by Seesmic. Incidentally, this functionality seems to have disappeared from the site – anyone know when/why?

It seems obvious that video should be more sociable than text, but I’m not sure it will ever take off in the same way, no matter what technological advances are made. While the tech savvy may be utilising video more and more, it is still largely the preserve of  early adopters.

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