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Comment by orangethirty | Hacker News Reader

IMHO, mobile video use is about to grow. This due to the amount of web apps coming out that focus on it. Ten years ago no one would even dream of a service like Instagram being a success. Who would want to take pictures with their cell phones and post them on a site? Turns out, millions of people. I think that video has that same potential. Just think about the possibilities:

- You can record the moment your {girl : boy}friend says yes to your marriage proposal and post it online ASAP.

- You can record that really funny joke your friend does and share it.

- You can do product placements and all kinds of marketing with it and people will never be any wiser.

This argument that people don't want to appear on video is wrong. People crave the attention video gives them. A quick visit to youtube is evidence enough.

I do think that the time limit for each video has to be around 10-15 seconds and not 6 seconds like Vine does. Its a bit too short.

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> Ten years ago no one would even dream of a service like Instagram being a success. Who would want to take pictures with their cell phones and post them on a site?

Are you kidding? People were taking pictures with camera phones like crazy soon after they were widespread. Digital cameras and camera phones changed society. The only reason why Instagram took so long to appear is because the likes of Verizon and AT&T suck at software and aren't nearly as motivated by what people want as they like to think.

You obviously don't get my point. Which is that we are about to reach the point where video is going to be used for short communication like images, tweets, and status updates. That has not been properly done before due to network speed, phone hardware, and software.

> You obviously don't get my point.

No, I get that point. The "who could imagine" part about Instagram/digital snapshots is what I objected to. All it takes is to step outside of ourselves and look at larger trends. Easier said than done, I know, but the signs were all there for photos from the time of feature-phone cameras.

I'm not so sure the signs are there for video. Calls can be spur of the moment casual. So can sending a photo. Video calls are a little too much like a get together or a date.

When video calls get to the point of casualness where lots of people are drunk dialing so they can show an out of town buddy something stupid at a bar, then there will be something there.

> - You can record the moment your {girl : boy}friend says yes to your marriage proposal and post it online ASAP.

Are people really so blase about recording video that they would hold their phone in front of their face, recording the other person, while proposing marriage?

I think alot of joyous "yes" replies would turn into "get that thing out of my face at a moment like this, are you kidding?".

People do this all the time.

I'm wondering if the new iPhone is going to have better video capturing abilities due to the way the App Store is promoting video apps right now. They often feature video apps, and sometimes throw up large "In the director's chair" features on the front page, despite the fact that no one (at least right now) seems to be downloading the apps in them.

Not only better hardware but better software too. We are about to enter a period where mobile video will become mainstream. It is already happening on the older social netwrorks.

Why do you think mobile video will become mainstream? A lot of mobile video is hard to watch, and requires a better connection than other mediums. Vine is interesting in that the capture mechanism is interactive,but do you have any examples besides the use of Vine? I'm still unclear whether it will stay or will be a fad -- it's hard to tell due to their awesome distribution.

Faster mobile networks and apps that make it easy to share and fancy-up with filters and whatnot.

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