Video Sharing Made Easy

Thanks to new mobile apps on the market video sharing no longer needs to be a mind-boggling experience that tests the average person’s patience. Now it is almost as easy to share a video as it is to shoot it. 

Most videos today are shot on mobile phones and remain there because it’s easy to record a fascinating moment. Sharing your video, however, can be tricky. The video upload feature is usually hard to find, and phones with an option to post video to YouTube often have too many steps.

The new video sharing apps automate the upload process, tie into Facebook and Twitter and reformat clips so that they play on multiple types of phones as well as computers. The most popular app is Socialcam for iPhone and Android (free from Apple’s App Store for iPhones or Google’s Android Market).

You can use Socialcam to record video or import clips from your camera and there’s no limit length. Once you are done recording, you have six options for sharing: Facebook, Twitter, SMS, e-mail, Tumblr and Posterous.

Another free app for iPhones, Thwapr, helps overcome the iPhone's video sharing limitations by letting you easily capture and share videos with many mobile devices.  Like Socialcam, you point and shoot.  Then you can send it to another mobile or post to Facebook or Twitter.   But Thwapr does not have Socialcam’s tagging features.

Thwapr’s best feature is that if you send a clip via e-mail or text message regardless of the recipient’s phone type. When they get the link, their phone will request the video from Thwapr, which figures out their phone model and how best to serve video to it.

Qik Video Connect solves two of the shortcomings in Socialcam and Thwapr.  First, it offers video sharing apps for recording video on a wide range of smartphones, not just iPhone and Android.  Second, Qik makes it easy to create a video post on Facebook that looks and plays like a prerecorded clip, but is actually connected live to your phone’s camera. Also, its recently introduced iPhone app includes hooks for bloggers and self-publishers to create live or prerecorded video links on most of the popular blog platforms, or in an R.S.S. feed.

Video sharing isn’t just for linking with friends and family.  It is also a great way to get more exposure for your business and your products and service.  But remember to keep your video short and engaging if you want to hold people’s attention.

Adapted from: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/05/technology/personaltech/05basics.html