There are lots of text, voice and video chat applications on Facebook and some of them like TinyChat are doing pretty well as it seems. And then there is still the rumor of a deep Skype integration on the social network.
So, is there space left for another video chat? SocialEyes is a social video service and going into public beta today.
First of all SocialEyes is not an application that you access via Facebook. You connect your Facebook account via the SocialEyes website, it pulls in your information and friends, then you are ready to go.
After having joined the service, you can record a short video message in case you are not available when someone would like to chat with you. You can also send video messages to your friends or entire groups.
A nice feature is the embedding of content. Using the embed.ly service, SocialEyes lets you embed YouTube videos, live streams, pictures and so on. Currently, embed.ly covers more than 160 services, so there should be something for everyone including news sources like CNN, CBS and ABC or services like SlideShare, Scribd, PollDaddy and Storify which could be interesting for, you guessed it, online lessons.
Another interesting feature on SocialEyes is “groups” which can be open or private. You can search and join them and as users are forced to connect SocialEyes with their Facebook account chances are significantly lower to meet weirdos like on Chatroulette back in the days plus you can block people.
There is also a YouTube channel hosted by the community manager of SocialEyes Kelly Anne Meyers. She uploads short how to videos and answers users’ questions which I think is a great idea.
SocialEyes could potentially be an interesting alternative for online lessons but of course it needs to be tested how many video streams it can deliver without delay etc. All in all I think it has potential for educational use.
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