As a Philadelphia web design company that loves SEO, SMO, PPC and any Internet trend or tool or acronym that you can use to benefit your business, we love keeping watch over what new trends are taking over and what platforms are able to keep afloat. The newest trend we’ve noticed (nay, adopted) is video chat. G+ Hangouts, Skype, Facebook and now Airtime from Sean Parker and Shawn Fanning.
Key points from latest market study by NPD’s In-Stat:
- The total number of video calling minutes of use will approach 550 billion minutes in 2015, a monumental increase from 141million minutes in 2010.
- Skype and Apple FaceTime are leading the mobile video calling market and had similar usage rates among mobile and tablet callers.
- 75% of Skype online users have made a video call.
“When did the Internet become so boring?” Parker asked during the press conference revealing Airtime. And with forward-thinking companies like Boomtown using Skype for meetings, G+ Hangouts for webinars and incorporating video chat into all marketing strategies, its apparent that brands that use social media marketing are spending more time on platforms that are advancing in the direction of video. Facebook’s only chance in the video world is Airtime, a free browser plugin that pulls your list of friends who may want to chat, or Facebook’s Skype integration video chat feature, which you can see here. But Facebook is still lacking a group chat capability that would let it compete with Skype and G+.
Magnet Labs has created Spreecast to try and jump on the video bandwagon with a backing of $7 million. Spreecast “allows users to join in on live conversations using video, text, or social media, as well as start their own public or private Spreecast on any topic,” according to the Magnet Labs web site. Another plus for Spreecast: the program lets you whitelabel each webinar and video conference so you customize the look before embedding your final video into your site or blog.
Integration with social media channels will be a huge factor for all video chat programs so brands and personalities can incorporate Twitter and Facebook comments to video streams so audience can engage with ease. (One downside to G+ is that audience members need to be G+ users, a platform that has yet to be greeted with open arms from the Internet-savvy community).
As of yet there isn’t a clear winner between G+, Skype, Meetings.io, Airtime and other video chat newcomers in our opinion. Do you think Airtime has a chance in the video chat world? And are there any more contenders to add to the list besides AOL, fring, Google, Microsoft Kinect, ooVoo, Raketu, Skype, and Tango?