Despite almost beatific predictions that social video will be the Next Big Thing, new research shows that video quality plays a big part in the decision to share mobile clips amongst friends—as in, shoddy picture quality is a big de-motivator.
That’s the result of a new survey carried out by Vivoom, a cloud video enhancement company, which found that eight billion videos were captured on mobile devices in 2012 but never shared because users “have no easy way to make them look better.”
"Quality is a significantly more complex challenge for video than it is for photos," said Katherine Hays, CEO of Vivoom, in a statement. "We believe—and this research shows—that if consumers are given a fun but effective way to improve video quality themselves, they are significantly more likely to share their videos with friends and family. We estimate removing the quality barrier could increase total social video sharing from 1 billion to 30 billion per year."
The top three things that social networkers look for when considering whether to share a video are quality, relevance and ability to get a reaction from their friends. The study found that social networkers use the content they share to positively influence others' impressions and use feedback to gauge their success in doing so. More than 80 percent of them share content online in order to receive validation and positive feedback from others. And so, more than 80 percent of social networkers feel it is important for their content to look good before they feel comfortable sharing it online.
The research also found that consumers are generally able to detect a high-quality video when they see one—even when the image resolution is the same. Despite most social networkers' hesitancy to share video today, 75 percent agreed that they would share a video they had taken if they could improve the quality and make it look more visually appealing easily, while 81 percent would share if they could customize their video quickly.
“The lack of sharing is not due to a lack of ability to capture—every smartphone today includes a video camera and options to share video,” Vivoom officials added. “The ease of video sharing isn't a factor, either—new mobile video applications have solved the technical hurdles and made it exceptionally easy to share video from a mobile device. However, they've failed to help users make their video worth sharing in the first place and consequently have seen steep declines in their active user base.”
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