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Why hasn't Video Mail taken off as a communication mode?

1 points by shekyboy ↗ HN
Ideally speaking video mail or video messaging should be a great medium for communicating with friends and family. It provides an extra element of emotion, which is clearly absent from text based messaging, which would be great for personal conversations.

However we still don't see many people using it. Wondering if this is an execution/technology challenge or a use case no one wants...

6 comments

[ 2.7 ms ] story [ 12.9 ms ] thread
verelo
For me, having headphones on to "read" my mail in private isnt ideal. I also like listening to music while i work, video would be annoying.
shekyboy
So its the extra level on engagement it needs, which is a challenge? Even if the video mail is from family or friends (aka people we care about)?
mooism2
Leaving videomail is worse than leaving voicemail, because you have to worry about your appearance, you have to worry about the lighting, and you have to look at the camera while you leave your message (no looking at notes).

Note that people use text based messaging even though audio messaging is available and provides an extra element of emotion.

shekyboy
Makes sense. Do you see yourself going through that for any specific use case?
mooism2
I can see that video direct mail would be attractive to advertisers, but I'd opt out of receiving it.

I can see people going to the extra effort of making a video mail rather than a voice mail in circumstances where synchronous conversation isn't possible and meeting in person is out of the question. But I can't see what those circumstances might be, outside the sci-fi trope of "spaceship crew keep in touch with their families back on Earth". Keeping in touch with high-security prisoners?

I can see ambient video connections being useful --- when you have a screen covering a wall showing the view into someone else's room, and visa versa, so you can get an impression of how busy and what sort of mood faraway people are in without them having to explicitly tell you; and start conversations when you're not interrupting. But that's possibly more useful for business, and not video mail.