MediaJoltz

There is a site called BubbleGuru that makes installing video on your website very easy.  All you do is register, and then follow the instructions on recording your video right there at your desk.  Then they show you how to put this video on your website.

While I am a fan of doing SOMETHING to be involved with media, I’m not sure how I feel about this service so I’m going to post all my thoughts about the pros and cons and ask you to take a look at it and decide for yourself if it is something you want to do.

First, I’ll start out with the pros.  Hats off to them for making it a fairly simple task to get video on your site.  All you do is connect your webcam and off you go.  If you don’t have a webcam, they provide links to get one-and webcams come pretty inexpensive now.  You don’t have to redesign to embed the video nor does it take up any space. And I think that having video on your site definitely is a must and to have something like Bubble Guru will bring attention to the specific page or information you want your site visitors to pay attention to.

That said, I do have a problem with pop-up video.  Have you visited a site that plays music that just started out of no where?  How many of us didn’t look for the “turn music off” button on the website.  If there wasn’t a way to turn the music off, did you stay at that website or move on?  In a day where everything is becoming more and more what the consumer wants WHEN the consumer wants it, intruding into their browsing experience with a pop-up video might not be the best way to go.  A button that allows the visitor to play the video if he or she wants it is an option at Bubble Guru, but it should be the default.

There is a way to stop the video, but not a way to pause it or rewind and so if you miss something, you have to start from the beginning of the video.  You also will get this video every time you visit the site-there is no “skip” method to the video, so after the 3rd or 4th visit, the video is already very old…

Also, the video takes a long time to load, so a message bubble might sit there with nothing in it for a while.  Then when it does load, even on my Mac 1.5 ghz 1 gig of ram computer, the video stumbles along sometimes stopping and skipping.

So things we can grow and learn from Bubble Guru is that video is a good thing and is fast becoming more than a fad, but a necessity.  What we don’t want to start doing though, is intruding our site visitors with “listen to me now!”  applications on our site.