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5 Reasons Why I'm watching VYou.com, a 'Conversational Video' Start-Up

By Sree Sreenivasan | December 20, 2010 8:42pm | Updated on December 20, 2010 8:49pm
A screen grab of the VYou player, with CEO and founder Steve Spurgat answering some questions from a journalist. You can see the questions on the right side and watch the answers at vyou.com/steve.
A screen grab of the VYou player, with CEO and founder Steve Spurgat answering some questions from a journalist. You can see the questions on the right side and watch the answers at vyou.com/steve.
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VYou

By Sree Sreenivasan

DNAinfo Contributing Editor

The thought of yet another new social-media project makes many folks queasy. They're barely able to keep up with Facebook and Twitter. They know they need to start using LinkedIn more. They keep hearing about Foursquare and how it's going to be huge.

So when I heard about VYou, a site doing video Q&As — or, in its preferred nomenclature, "conversational video" — I was skeptical.

I don't have time to get caught up in something new — even if it is the Next Big Thing. I've seen too many Next Big Things turn out to be anything but.

But after spending a few days playing around with the service, I could see how for some people and certain companies, this could indeed be a Next Big Thing. 

It works like this, according to the site: "You record video responses to messages entered by friends and fans. VYou organizes their messages and your videos into conversations, making the experience feel continuously live even though the content is stored."

Go to VYou.com and you are presented with a bunch of video screens — faces of various people you can interact with. Some are famous: here's Josh Hamilton, Texas Rangers outfielder; here's essayist and author Chuck Klosterman; others, you've probably never heard of.

Each person who has created an account to answer questions also creates a "waiting video," given the illusion that he or she is just sitting there, live, ready to interact with you (it might appear a little strange, till you get used to it). You then type in a question and if the wording matches something the person has answered already, you get an answer. Otherwise, you are likely to hear that person's "no response yet" video which says something like, "Sorry, I don't have an answer to that, I'll have to get back to you later." At first, you will encounter a lot of those get-back-to-you-later videos.

But once you get the hang of the site and more people start answering more questions, the database will spew out more — and better — answers, all depending on the quality of the person doing the answering, of course.

So why am I paying attention to a site that has been up for just two months?

1. I am fascinated by startups. But most get press attention once they are to too big for their founders to be candid and direct. Talking to a startup that's well, starting out, is a nice change of pace.

2. It's starting to get some traction. In the first six weeks, it had 500,000 visits and 1.5 million pageviews; more than 45,000 videos have been viewed more than 2 million times; 6,500 subscribers have signed up; 2,000 people have recorded video responses.

3. They're onto something. Using the medium of video to do Q&As has lots of potential. How do I know? To test the service, I asked founder and CEO Steve Spurgat, several questions via VYou. You can see the questions and the links to the answers below. You'll see that as a reader of this story, his responses and the way he provides them give you a much better sense of him than I could convey via text.

Q: How did you come up with the idea for VYou?
A: Spurgat's answer:http://vyou.com/a/48483

Q: There are so many new tech products and services out there, why should people pay attention to this one?
A: Spurgat's answer: http://vyou.com/a/48477

Q: Is this a terrible time to be starting something new or a terrific time to be starting something new?
A: Spurgat's answer: http://vyou.com/a/48413

Q: What's the hardest challenge for the team right now?
A: Spurgat's answer: http://vyou.com/a/48401

Q: What are three tips you can share for new entrepreneurs?
A: Spurgat's answer: http://vyou.com/a/48415

4. Lots of use cases. This isn't going to replace Twitter — it may not even compete with it, except for people's time — but like that service, I can see many different use cases. Celebrities wanting to connect with fans with more than 140 characters are obvious early adopters, hence the early tie-up between VYou and several baseball players, including all-stars Brian Wilson, David Ortiz and Torii Hunter. I am sure we'll see musicians and Hollywood-types here soon.

I can see colleges using it for admissions-related work: to answer questions from applicants, in addition to a traditional FAQ; and to have applicants answer specific questions to give a better sense of their personalities.

Journalists can use it to explain their work or connect with their readers. Hotels can offer a 24-hour, over-the-web concierge. Authors, politicians and nonprofits will also find this useful. Companies of various sizes can use it for curstomer service or to promote new products. In short, anyone who has an idea, product or service to sell or promote can use this form of communication to solidify existing customer bases or create new ones.

5. It gets social media. Lot of startups claim to be all about social media, but VYou isn't all talk. It makes smart use of Facebook and Twitter. The way the site is set up makes it very social and easy to use. According to Spurgat, about 42 percent of traffic is coming from Twitter, Facebook and Tumblr, which is a pretty good start. Individual responses or entire channels of answers by one person or brand can be embedded elsewhere.

I'll be watching VYou and, and you should, too. In fact, you should create an account and answer some questions right now. Or you can ask me questions on my VYou channel: vyou.com/sreenet.

One last thing. How is the name of the site pronounced? Is it "view" or "v-you?" The definitive answer, "v-you," is in this hyperactive answer from Bijal Shah, who is on the VYou team.

What do you think? Post your comments below or on Twitter @sree.

Every week, DNAinfo contributing editor Sree Sreenivasan, a Columbia journalism professor, shares his observations about the changing media landscape.