TechCrunch today posted an article on VSee. We like it a lot and recommend you go read it! Click here to get there.
However, I’d like to take just a quick second to clear up a couple points:
First: We don’t actually claim to have more collaborative tools than the rest…only Skype! Skype has a sub-par desktop share that only works when video is turned off. And it’s a screenshot rather than a direct share. Everyone else (WebEx, GoToMeeting, Nefsis, etc.) generally has a full comple (more…)
Skype announced it will soon have an IPO. (Also here.)
Let’s not confuse this with being a business tool.
Yes, video calling is handy for businesses. But what about presentation and collaborative tools?
Skype has an immense user base, and yet operational income for the first half of 2010 was only $1.4M. This net is surprisingly small for a company this large and with their revenues ($406M). Sustaining this small income means expanding upon a model that simply doesn’t support businesses, and doesn’t appear efficient in the first place.
Let’s break this down:
Skype is designed to encourage viral adoption. A simple UI, free for everyone to get, and free to make most calls. Most especially, scalability to global proportions and the ability to make and receive calls from ANYwhere with enough bandwidth.
Part of Skype’s weakness for enterprise use lies in that last portion. Scalability to gl (more…)
Believe it or not, you act differently when you’re on a phone call.
And different from that on video.
Oh, and you reply differently via chat.
And why did you respond that way in email?
Folks, it’s not news, but the medium informs the communication. Obviously we think everyone should be video collaborating and there are immense benefits to doing so. However, as with anything worth doing, there are things to prepare for so your collaborative efforts will run as smoothly as possible.
According to the book Challenges in Virtual Collaboration (Lynne Wainfan and Paul K. Davis, RAND Corporation, National Defense Research Institute, 2005):
All media change the context of the communication somewhat, generally reducing cues used to (1) regulate and understand conversation, (2) indicate participants’ perspective, power, and status, and (3) move the group toward agreement.
In VC (videoconferencing), AC (audioconferencing), and CMC (computer-mediated communication), participants tend to cooperate less with those at other “nodes” and more often shift their opinions toward extreme or risky options than they do in FTF collaboration.
In VC and AC collaboration, local coalitions can form in which participants tend to agree more with those in the same room than with those on the other end of the line. There is also a tendency in AC to disagree with those on the other end of the communication link.
CMC can reduce efficiency (as measured in time to solution), status effects, domination, participation, and consensus. It has been shown useful in broadening the range of inputs and ideas. However, CMC has also been shown to increase polarization, deindividuation, and disinhibition. That is, individuals may become more extreme in their thinking, less sensitive to interpersonal aspects of their messages, and more honest and candid.
And that’s just from the summary of the book! They state these are gleaned from roughly 40 years of various groups in various places researching exactly what we do. The question is, in an increasingly tech-mediated world, how do we minimize the pitfalls of this communication?
The answer: Skilled Moderation
You don’t need to hire professionals to handle your meetings and calls for you. I think we’re all familiar enough with the technology to have a sense of it. The authors suggest several practices that I wholeheartedly agree with:
1) Break the ice first. At least when reasonable. For groups of roughly 10 and under, have people talk a little about themselves. If possible, have people that are not colocated call each other separately before the business discussion and talk a little about themselves. This will cut down on coalitions.
2) Make participants aware of the pitfalls. Simply by being warned about our inclination to change behavior for VC, AC, and CMC, participants can make conscious decisions to follow the positive inclinations and reject the negative.
3) Pick a moderator. This is tricky. First, the moderator must have sufficient knowledge of the topic at hand. Second, they must have a keen eye and knowledge of the shortcomings of each medium. It is their job to help the flow of discussion in the presence of missed cues, reign in inappropriate comments and behavior, add context for comments that would be understood in another setting, and just generally make sure the goals of the meeting are met.
It isn’t easy to remember these actions, and often we skip over them. Thankfully we’ve reached a certain tolerance for altered behavior in these new mediums. However, doing our best to follow those three suggestions should help immensely in avoiding unnecessary disagreements, hurt feelings, and inefficiency.
1. Skype’s beta only allows up to 5 callers—I’ve had an 11-way call* on VSee.
2. Skype only shares desktop OR video—VSee shows both.
3. Speaking of screen sharing: Skype’s screen sharing quality can be sub-par—VSee’s starts pixel perfect.
4. Skype has little else for collaborative tools—VSee does it all.
5. Skype is aimed at personal use—VSee is meant for getting work done!
6. Skype plans to charge within 3 to 4 months—VSee is free for personal use, period.
*Remember, you have to have the CPU and available bandwidth to do this. This will also be true for Skype. I use a 2.2 GHz dual core computer with roughly a Mb of bandwidth both up and downstream. However, even on a netbook on an EVDO card I can have a good 3-way call.
Every day I have at least one conversation that revolves around using VC (“video conferencing” or “video collaboration”) to “get things done” rather than “meet”. Obviously efforts to increase acceptance of putting video collaboration tools where they’re most beneficial are gaining traction.
For example, I know of at least one F500 company where over a third of their workforce telecommutes. I also just spoke with a CEO whose company’s greatest concentration of employees is only three people in one geographical area (they have many employees, but globally distributed).
The big indicator, however, is that certain competitive VC segments that traditionally ignored “ad-hoc” VC use in favor of “conferences” have finally targeted desktops. Okay, they’ve actually been on desktops for awhile. I mean, they’re finally working to get onto desktops in a way that doesn’t require an hour of work just to talk to a guy in Des Moines for five minutes. Now, who knows for sure when they’ll be able to roll that out…it certainly isn’t next month or the month after that…but they’re getting around to it.
Why? I assume it’s because they’re finally getting hip to something we’ve known from the start: Video needs to be where people work, not only where they meet and present in, in order to drive adoption.
The industry as a whole, beginning even before the computer revo (more…)
If you read any tech news at all today, you read about Google Buzz. ReadWriteWeb, TechCrunch, you name it (CNN), they wrote about it. (Figures CNN’s headline mentions taking on Facebook…right when I start a full court Facebook blitz. Dang.)
Well, the reason I bring it up here isn’t to rehash news that’s already been well hashed. It’s because my theme of discussing society’s move to embrace behavior that I bring it up here.
Google Buzz is all about taking a giant user base (Gmail users) and getting them to constantly stream information, updates, photos, video, etc. This is a tipping point. Facebook and Twitter are huge, and not as many people have Gmail. However, Buzz will happily update Facebook and Twitter for you, and Google has the kind of mainstream pull to be a game changer. Not for Facebook or Twitter. For you.
“This is VSee’s blog,” you might be saying.”What does this have to do with remote collaboration, video streaming, etc.?
1) Google’s mainstream pull, as well as it’s penetration into the workplace as a leading provider of corporate email accounts, creates a breeding ground for new users to be dragged into the social networking fray by their early adopter friends. I won’t swear to this, but I’ll be shocked if corporate Gmail users aren’t among the first converts. Social information, really only immediate for the early adopters and the early majority, is now immediately available to anyone with a Gmail account. No new account needed.
2) When critical mass is reached, the expectation for immediate information combined with the human need to actually interact with another human becomes a perfect pipeline for our industry. As the late majority (for you non-business readers, the later mainstream audience) embraces reading status updates, video status, IM, etc., both personal and business communication should increasingly become more personal and intimate in nature. It will also become a business necessity because…
3) Personalization is the new market. There are so many studies out there describing this that I won’t cite any. (Fine, it’s 10:30 p.m. and I just don’t feel like it.) It’s accepted that, at least in the US, a large part of tech is based off creating products that can be tailored to the individual user’s needs. There are refrigerators with microchips. You can watch TV on them and tell them how hot you want the water from the water dispenser…the flow and filtration of which may also be controlled by microchips. Speaking of TVs, how do you like the color settings on your TV? What software is on your computer? Do you use all the features? If a feature isn’t available, has some developer somewhere made a plugin that creates that feature? I started with a basic physical item (a fridge) and moved to individual functions within software to illustrate the point. Now back out to services such as Facebook and Google, which are immensely customizeable. Now, what is more custom than an actual person presented to you to serve your needs?
4) The last phase of this acceptance comes from competition. As people become more accustomed to dealing remotely with others, the businesses that are able to get customers and clients, vendors and capitalists in face-to-face meetings are going to have an edge. This not only has to do with trust building, but also with gauging reactions during negotiations. During any presentation or negotiation, the teams that are able to mutually see each other are more likely to find accord because they can steer their courses based off visual cues. A three day back-and-forth may be cut down to two hours in an afternoon. Where is the window of opportunity for a competitor to sneak in and derail this process? Well, since business already concluded, there won’t be one.
I’m excited by the Buzz. I’ve got no fewer than three different Gmail accounts for different purposes. And I’m maintaining three different Facebook accounts and two Twitter accounts. Once again, though, and just like in my piece on Hillary’s speech, this news is much more exciting for what it means rather than what it is.
…But it’s just not there yet. I mean, we’re free for most users, right?
So this was an interesting bit of news today from TechCrunch and ViVu.
Basically, ViVu created a Skype plug-in called “VuRoom” that will enable multiparty calling and some additional collaboration tools.
Aaaand they’re going to charge $9.95 a month for it. Now, it’s reported that Skype uses some running installations as “supernodes” to share the massive directory and even conversation traffic, which can severely reduce your available bandwidth—even when running only in the system tray! Risking this, and since Skype’s video is lower-quality even for one-on-one conversations, why switch to something that is likely to degrade video quality even more by adding additional callers and spend $10 a month to do it?
Someone over here (I won’t say who), brought up another interesting point: ViVu seems to have faith that Skype won’t natively support multiparty conferencing tools at this level in the near future. Doesn’t that feel like a gamble? If that happens, what will the VuRoom subscribers do?
Sadly, the story mentions they’ll be facing competition from TokBox
and Tinychat, but doesn’t mention VSee. I’ll be the first to admit we’re not (yet) well enough known, but still, when we’re offering a fully featured multiparty video calling/conferencing/collaboration solution to the general public for free, it blows my mind that more casual users haven’t discovered us yet. (I know, I know. But seriously, do most casual users call more than 10 people a month via video? I didn’t think so.)
Readers, tell you friends what’s over here. Start a little grassroots campaign to get the word out. Our friends shouldn’t need to spend money to use these tools!!!
POWER TO THE PEOPLE!
Okay, I’m getting off my soapbox now. 
Originally posted on my personal blog shortly after joining VSee as Chief Product Officer.
Since I left Convoq, the web conferencing start-up here in Boston where I served as CTO, I’ve gotten a lot of calls from companies doing personal video communications products. Some were in the process of raising capital, some were looking to hire, and they all wanted advice.
When this activity was at a particularly high point I remarked to my friend Doug Levin that it looked like another wave of videoconferencing vendors were appearing. He said I’d been involved in enough of these that I should write a book. I didn’t want to do that until I could write the happy ending, but I did write a blog post in which I looked at how video calling had been a fixture in science fiction literature for decades but had still not replaced the telephone in the real world. I also asked whether the technology and the culture had evolved to the point that video calling might now be ready for the mainstream.
Notice my choice of words above — “whether technology and the culture had evolved” — as I sensed more and more the delicate cultural issues around having your video presence online, your face right there for all to see, might be more of a factor in the adoption of the technology than developers had realized. Many people in the early days of videoconferencing were quite shy about having their faces splashed across the screen, but with social media changing the game, in a Facebook world, these cultural barriers are giving way. People are feeling more at ease seeing and being seen by others. As for the technology, it’s been changing too and for the better.
My blog post on videoconfencing caught the attention of Milton Chen, the CEO of VSee Labs a videoconferencing startup in Mountain View, California. Milton’s PhD dissertation at Stanford had explored this very topic and described some very innovative work on improving video enough that people would feel comfortable using it. He’d also raised some money, recruited a number of his Stanford colleagues, and started a company to put his ideas into action. After many hours of conversations using the product, I can say that it is the first one where I didn’t feel like reaching for the phone halfway through a meeting.
Apparently enough other people feel that way as well, since VSee has some very high profile paying customers, including Shell Oil, NASA, and the government of Singapore. VSee also uses the product internally in some ways that are on the leading edge of how companies organize themselves in this era where travel is expensive and bandwidth is cheap.
The more I looked into it the more I became persuaded that this company may have the critical combination of technology, customers, and timing to propel videoconferencing and real-time collaboration into the mainstream. To make a long story short, I recently accepted the invitation to begin a long-term assignment as Chief Product Officer of VSee.
As I held one-on-one video conversations with members of the VSee team, often as not I reached them working at home, which could be in Amsterdam or China as well as Silicon Valley. One engineer realized he would be between the home and the office at the appointed time, and brought his USB camera with him to an Internet cafe. The developers often keep a conversation nailed up on the screen while they are coding, allowing them to see who’s at work, ask a quick question, or look at each other’s code, the way they would if they could yell over to the next cubicle in an office.
Given that VSee is in Mountain View and I live in Boston, I expect to be spending a fair amount of time traveling to meet customers and work with the team. However, video and application sharing will be the day-to-day way we keep in touch. I look forward to writing about how that works, as well as describing some of the innovative ways VSee’s customers have been using the product themselves.