Video commenting hitting the information highway

Bubble Comment is exactly that, a way to comment on a website in your own little bubble. It's hardly new in terms of allowing people to leave comments, but as I've previously written, webcams do seem to be the social tool of the modern generation.

This new start up company which created Bubble Comment, privately held by kShermanStudios LLC., have provided services for some big names, including Yahoo! and Verizon. They claim to be "pioneers in video interaction techniques and continually strive to create useful video solutions that help improve the world of web-based communications."

There have of course been video commenting solutions, start ups, enterprises and dreams, but there hasn't been one that's particularly kicked off. The interesting thing about Bubble Comment is you don't subscribe to the service as a "dedicated service"; it acts independently and remains independent of the websites it supports.

Developers can take a day off if need be, as it relies on the user to open up the Bubble Comment and leave a message. It's then up to the person leaving a video message to pass on the links to their friends or colleagues. When that person opens that link, they see the website as it was (whether they use any caching, I'm not too clear about), with their recording in a bubble in the top right of the screen.

However, developers can easily share this method of recording comments by adding a small button to the end of each post; easy for those using Wordpress or another blogging platform, which takes them to their destination.

It's free, easy to use, very user friendly for those not confident with computers, but comments left in the bubble are limited to 90 seconds, and/or 200 playbacks, whichever comes first, and expire and vanish into the ether after 30 days.

One major setback they may have not considered: not everybody has a webcam. Simple as it may seem, many still fear it to be a "security risk", especially if there are kiddly-winks running around the house. Nevertheless, it's an interesting service and for a new product, its already got it's name on many high-ranking websites.

Obviously (the more boring side to this article, yawn) is the business advantages. Clearly stating on the website, this provides a more personalised approach to business sales. Seeing someone describe the product openly and (not often) honestly makes a sales purchase more likely. It could also be a key tool in directing people to a new part of a corporate web page; marketing essentially just got easier.

With this in mind though, neither of these things would work properly on a large scale yet. The restrictions imposed on the video bubble still limits how much it can be viewed. Perhaps this is something short term to help stabilise the service? Get the product working on a small scale as a proof-of-concept and build it up?

Only time will tell. Feel free to use and abuse me like you normally do by using Bubble Comment. If anything, it'll keep you busy for a good two minutes.