This evening, we’ve been testing a groovy new startup site called Wetoku. It allows you to almost instantly record and embed video in blog posts such as this one.
Although the sound and video quality are not yet stellar, we’re very impressed with the concept. This is the kind of thing that would make remote, instant video journalism possible. Click a link, speak your peace with another webcam user, end the recording, and you are presented with an embed code the second the recording is over. Read, watch, and get registration code info at the end of the post!
Here’s one of the first tests with affiliate marketer Robert Sterling of Richmond, Virginia:
And here’s a chat with New York IBMer Mauricio Godoy:
No review of a new Internet video service would be complete without commentary from the godfather of video blogging, Steve Garfield:
As mentioned, we’d like to see better sound and audio quality, and there are a few site bugs. But we’d also love to get a simple, in-browser video editor to clip the ends of recordings or even merge two separate recordings together. Better yet, we’d also like to see a downloadable format so the chats can be pulled into a desktop video editor and remixed with other media, as well.
As for the embedding part, we’d like to see more customization options, especially for colors and sizes. We’d pay for that, and also to see a version without the Wetoku watermark in the top right corner. Other features we’d pay for include preroll and postroll, for branding and recommendation of other videos, respectively.
The folks we tested the site with pointed out the similarity to TinyChat. In terms of ease of use – this, too, is the ultimate one-click webcam experience – the two services are quite similar. However, TinyChat videos disappear second by second, never to be seen again unless the user in question has a pro account. Will Wetoku recordable, embeddable video chat be a free service? What do you think of the concept so far?
We have a limited number of registration codes for the private beta. If you’re interested in testing the site, please email [email protected] and include a link to your blog.
