Yesterday, FirstPost.com, the online news portal from the Network18 group, launched YouSpeak, a platform which allows users to share their views via video. The approach to encouraging videos is interesting: FirstPost is taking almost a discussion forum approach to videos: Firstly, it is allowing its users to start discussions on issues via video, and just in case that doesn't happen (although there isn't such a thing as commenting fatigue, video can be tedious) it is enabling its own writers/staff to share views, with the purpose of seeding a discussion on issues - for example, this on the Yahoo's telecommuting ban. How it works Durga Raghunath, VP Product and Executive News, Firstpost, told MediaNama that they tried to focus a lot on the ease of uploading "The commenting tech has been around so long and well thought out, that we were ready to make this far richer, and let people speak on video. - Requirements: There's a rather large record button below videos which allows viewers to respond to these via videos, and a users Desktop/laptop needs to be enabled with a webcam. There isn't a mobile app for publishing videos, but Raghunath says FirstPost plans to launch an android application next week. - Not anonymous? FirstPost is ensuring that users at least use facebook or twitter logins to post videos, and follow that up with an email registration. FirstPost says this will prevent anonymous commenting, but that is unlikely - it's easy to create an anonymous twitter account and an email…
