Facebook's Video application went live over the weekend, catching the service up with its social networking rival, MySpace. I found the app to be about as simple and basic as a shared video app could be. Of course that's a double-edged sword -- there's almost no learning curve, but you can't do much with it either.
Why does Facebook need video anyway? "Most people already have video content somewhere, on digital cameras, camcorders or cell phones, but have nowhere to put it where they can efficiently share it with the people they care about," explains the Facebook Video FAQ.
The new video app isn't automatically enabled on everyone's Facebook profile, so I selected the app from a list of other add-on applications and added it to my profile.
First try: Then I was ready to upload some video. After clicking the "Upload a New Video" button I was shown a dialogue box asking me to browse for a video on my PC.
Facebook says it supports "just about any" video file format. I first tried uploading a 2:55 Flash video file, but soon received this email from Facebook:
Hey Mark,You recently uploaded a video to Facebook, and it could not be processed because it was too long.
Funny because Facebook says the videos should be no longer than 10 minutes.
Second try: Undeterred, I then tried uploading a short MPEG file. That worked better. After hitting "upload video," the upload started and I was asked to fill in some details about the video. By the time I finished filling in the name of the video and some other basic meta data, the app informed me that my video had already been compressed into a Flash file and was available at my profile. The upload and compression took about 10 seconds.
After your video is up, Facebook Video gives you the tools to make some very basic edits to the file, and I mean very basic. You can't mess with the video itself at all: No video cropping or adding of captions. You can, however, edit the meta data around the video. The app also gives you some choice as to which video frame you want to use as your video's thumbnail image.
Facebook also lets you upload video shot with a cell phone. But cell phone video must be attached to an email and sent to video@facebook.com; it isn't automatically uploaded to the site like web cam video.
Facebook Video does do a couple of tricks that are so far not available at MySpace. If one of your friends appears in the video, you can "tag" the video as such, and a link to the video will show up on your friend's profile. Facebook has also built video into its email system so that you can, in effect, use video instead of text to send and reply to mail from your Facebook pals. You have to have Flash recording software, a web cam and a microphone to play, however.
