Video? Finally?

As many will say, the most exciting part of yesterday’s iPhone 4 announcement was the addition of FaceTime.  FaceTime is the ability for iPhones to call other iPhones using a two cameras (front and back) using WiFi, not the LAN.  As an old video geek, I have so much road-rash from my twenty years of video conferencing that it’s hard to believe that we’ve finally got video on the way.  But, as you look at the evidence, it surely is mounting:

1. About 25% of calls on Skype now use video.  Given that there are 550+ million Skype accounts, and normally over 20 million users on a daily basis, that’s a lot of video.
2. Imminent announcements of Skype for TV suggest that Skype feels like the time is now to put video in the hands of the average Joe.
3. Companies like Oovoo and Vidyo are gaining real traction in the market place
4. Vidtel suddenly seems like the right company, at the right time. Vidtel’s mission to reduce the friction for carriers so that they can deploy video in their network seems prescient, especially when you imagine the Skype community and the iPhone communities interacting and melding. For those of you who doubted Scott Wharton, well – I hope you learned your lesson.
5. Vgo recently announced their video conferencing enabled Robot. Car pool buddy, former next-door neighbor and former CTO of PictureTel Tim Root seems to think that we’re ready for a video enabled life, and he’s way smarter than me.

Video, you femme fatal, are you finally gracing our world? Finally?

ps. Picture insert of Chuck Grandgent, IMTC fellow circa 1991 on the first videoconferencing application for the PC. And yes, he very often walked around cross-eyed with test leads attached to his beard.

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