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Photographs > Video ?

I’ve been trying to think about all the interest around mobile video concepts today. From what I can tell, companies like Klip, Viddy, Vidly, and Socialcam (plus many others) all allow mobile users to capture and share video from their phones. With all the excitement around the phone camera (encapsulated by Instagram), as well as the quick scale that social distribution platforms can provide, there seems to be another rush to see if someone can pull off video. Whereas photographs seemed obvious to many, I’d have to admit I’m a bit skeptical about video. One, I’m not sure if it’s a core behavior as snapping pictures is. I wonder what percentage of media files on a user’s phone is picture vs. video I posed this question informally on Twitter today, and most answers came back from zero to around 10% (either music concerts or for their family’s children). Two, the current interfaces seem to deemphasize “capturing video” as a feature within the camera interface. And, three, even if core behaviors change and/or the software around the video camera evolve, there are technical hurdles that would need to be overcome in order for the average phone user to capture and share a video that would meet the requirements the audience’s time to consume that media. The bar is just higher for video. I’m not saying it cannot be done (nor that it’s not worthwhile), but my gut is telling me there are still more opportunities around photographs themselves. More on that later this week…