Last year when podcasting was taking off, people would complain about it and say “but you can’t comment with audio” and I think we’ve all learned that’s a load of crap. The same goes with videoblogs, commenting is entirely possible, and the people who think it isn’t either don’t have any imagination, or have nothing worthwhile to say.
If you really think about it, the main complaint comes when people try to compare audio or video to the straight text/photo world of blogging, but haven’t people been commenting on the internet about offline things since the days of usenet? Discussing television shows, movies, sports, keynote speeches, and other thinkg that don’t have a permalink attached to them?
Most common in podcasting is the “comment line” where a podcaster gets a (free) voicemail number and gives out the number during the podcast so you can call in and leave comments. It’s also common to accept feedback as an mp3 file. Dawn and Drew do this perfectly, and end each podcast with comments from the listeners. Of course there’s always the post on the website where the podcast came from to leave comments, though listeners might never even go to the web site once subscribed to the feed and automatically getting the new episodes each time.
So far in the videoblogging world I’ve mostly seen the “post on the website where the videoblog came from to leave comments” method, though people also seem to record their own responses and post them and then point to them. It’s interesting to see how things are developing in these two similar/yet slightly different worlds… I wonder if any videobloggers have free voicemail numbers and accept audio comments. I think this would be a good idea, and it could be incorporated into video quite well…
Oh yeah, as mentioned previously I’ve been exploring video and finally put tinkernet.org to good use. At least I hope it’s good use. Time will tell…