Best WebRTC Innovation? The Wallpaper
Serenity. That's what WebRTC services provide today.
It has been boring these past 2 decades. If you ever entered a conference room with multiple participants, running on an industrial, enterprise looking video conference bridge (=MCU), then you know the dreary feeling. You are confronted with Hollywood Squares. The worst thing? It never looks as good as advertised, as there always seem to be one or two missing participants to just fill that 9-squares layout (or 4, or 6, or 16) exactly right. And then these missing squares? Black holes.
In recent months, I have been switching most of my video chats with companies to WebRTC calls – deciding to use what I preach, and the results left me missing none of the "good old days". What I did notice though, is that the web, and WebRTC, have brought one true innovation into the game – something that most enterprise systems have missed – a wallpaper.
Here are some examples for your enjoyment.
LiveNinja
TokBox's Oscar
* while I am showing here marketing screenshots, I assure you that I actually used these services and they are… wallpapered.
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Have a great weekend!
Tsahi Levent-Levi
Independent WebRTC analyst. I help companies ship real-time communications they can actually monitor. 20+ years in the comms space, last 13 focused on WebRTC.
More about Tsahi →
Would you like that kind of wallpaper on Bistri's Video Conferencing? It wouldn't be the most challenging feature that we've added on Bistri :)
http://blog.bistri.com/post/54362271117/webrtc-video-conferencing-and-screen-sharing-for
:-)
Not sure. Just making an observation that this is almost a trend in WebRTC companies.
Tsahi,
I think the larger point here is that webrtc allows communication in context to other web based workflow. It follows that customers would want to brand the experience to match. We have found that our customers respond very well to this option.
Mark
Nice topic Tsahi, it is probably the most trivial feature but very visible.
Tawk.com uses a distinctive wallpaper from our local area on our home page. We were actually too heads down to see the trend elsewhere until after we released.
Embedded tawk.com inherits the background from the page being embedded into.
I think there will be lots of room for UX/UI innovation beyond background.
Doug
:-)
Love what you've done with Tawk.com - I am actually using it to show people what WebRTC can do.
Tsahi – Good observation: the new #WebRTC conferencing world is already looking cooler! And you and I are thinking along the same lines this week - that WebRTC should allow much greater innovation from all those web developers to produce more interesting and productive video collaboration user experiences. Wallpaper is a good start, and I also discuss the need for new post-Hollywood-Squares conference interaction models at WebRTC World here: http://bit.ly/Byrd-WebRTC-2