I SEE YOU!
Great article in the Washington Post today titled "Video Phones Offer Face time, even if consumers aren't ready". It starts in a timelessly quaint fashion:
"George Jetson, his boy Elroy, Dick Tracy and Capt. James T. Kirk have used video phones for decades, calling people across the universe with unselfconscious ease.
But Americans have never embraced the technology which -- far from being science-fiction fantasy -- has been around since AT&T unveiled it at the 1964 World's Fair.
Internet communications company Skype Technologies SA yesterday joined a band of firms offering video phone service in the belief that people are finally ready to overcome the basic human fear of being seen on a bad hair day."
The story then goes on to talk a bit about the Skype 2.0 software discussed yesterday. But then it starts to get to the heart of the matter:
"Sheldon H. Hochheiser, a former AT&T historian, said the company's first video offering -- Picturephone -- failed for three key reasons: high cost, the chicken-and-egg problem of getting one when no one else has one, and a general reluctance of people to be seen when they talk on the phone."
Of course, as the pieces goes on to describe, the first two issues are well on their way to being solved, with broadband making the cost of communications essentially zero, and the attendant PC and cellphone/mobile hardware doing the essentially the same for the hardware accessories needed for video communication.
So we're now down to the biggie: CULTURAL acceptance of this new way to communicate over a long distance.
It's deja vu from the days of when Alexander Graham Bell introduced telephony to the world. For the first decade or so, the conventional wisdom was why would people use voice telephony when they had a perfectly good way to communicate, by Telegraph, which had worked perfectly well since 1832.
Remember AT&T stood for American Telephone and Telegraph, in that order, which then went onto to popularize telephone use first for long-distance and then for local service.
Ironically, video telephony may go mainstream the same way: first via use for long-distance, formal communication, followed by the growing use for local use.
Of course what's different this time is that there is NO cost differential between long-distance and local this time around as there obviously was for the first century of voice communication, at least on PCs and laptops with broadband connections in the home and at the office.
However, given that much of this video telephony application is going to come at us via the "walled garden" cellular carriers rather over our cell phones (aka mobiles in Euroland),, the cost differential will likely continue to exist on the wireless side and be non-existent on the home/office broadband wireline side.
As a result, we may see a horse-race. It'll be interesting to see where video telephony takes off first...over our PCs or our cell phones. Especially given the pricing/cost differences, not to mention the convenience differences (assuming mobile is more convenient than stationary PCs).
But both parties do need to take into consideration the fact that people are more self-conscious about a video call than a voice call. They may need to provide additional tools to re-assure users.
Like maybe a side window, "mirror-cam/screen" that's always on before and during a video call that shows you what you look like to the other party.
There also needs to be an effort to provide better lighting and angles to flatter the caller, much like the best friends of a movie star was (and still are) the camera and lighting guys.
With the help of CGI (computer-generated imagery), providers may also need to provide the ability to generate more flattering backdrops while users are on a video call, to mask the more "casual" state of where they might be. Again, a Hollywood trick brought to mainstream consumer use.
At a time, when over 30 million users cell phone care about, and pay through nose for the ring tones that their callers and they can hear on cell phones, these additional features may not be at all excessive.
Who knows, the CGI backdrop business may even become a multi-million business to rival ringtones...I mean imagine, doing a video call from the bridge of the Star Wars Deathstar, complete with a Darth Vader "deep breathing" ring tone.
It's going to be an interesting five years indeed. In the meantime, I better start carrying a comb...you never know who might be calling.
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