Our social feeds are still primarily dominated by photos, despite the fact that our phones shoot killer video, too. But video composition is harder and somehow less mysterious than a lone filtered photo ala Instagram. Video involves sound, editing, and some form of story. At least good videos do.
And that’s exactly the problem: because we’re accustomed to posting under our own handles, we care a lot about the quality (and the contents) of our videos. We try to make videos that represent ourselves or our tastes in a positive light, or we don’t try at all. (Mostly the latter.)
Anonymity might make people more profligate video-makers. Without the tampering of ego, what would people decide to record? That’s the question that has recently preoccupied Jonathan Swerdlin, co-founder and CEO of Ocho, a video startup in New York City. The company released a new anonymous video app this week called Panama.
If Swerdlin’s curiosity is borne out, it will mean a new breed of privacy upsets, memes, and a big net positive: a new avenue for video-based creativity.
“We’re interested in this idea of social impact over personal impact—a network that is content first,” says Swerdlin. “We’re interested in context.”
While of course we’re still going to see people attributing video to themselves, Swerdlin says, we’ll also see people shooting anonymously and uploading their work to networks that categorize videos by something other than auteur. “People are going to consume video based on context, not just based on who the creator is,” says Swerdlin.
This observation has little to do with Ocho. For the past several months, Swerdlin and his engineers have been building the Panama app using the same underlying video framework as their flagship product, but Swerdlin says it doesn’t compete or cannibalize Ocho. Quality and content is mediated by a Reddit-like upvote/downvote system in each location feed, keeping spam at a minimum.
For Panama, the context is location. Videos are authorless, but tied to the place they were shot. Exploring a new place is particularly interesting in landscape mode, where the top videos from a location play in succession, giving the viewer a variegated view of the life and times in that place.
In some places, you find recurring characters captured by different people in different videos. In others, you see similar scenes but from different vantage points. Over time, you can see the seasons change. Videos I shot with Panama during testing this summer in the Arctic Circle already feel like ancient history since the first snow of the season arrived there this week.
The impact, Swerdlin says, is a more public role for anyone who happens to get in the way of the lens. “As long as it’s not inside the privacy of someone’s home, we all have a recording device—anyone should be able to record what they see, and everyone else should expect to be recorded,” he says. “It’s a right of the internet to contribute content without attribution. That creates a more honest environment, and a more true reflection of what’s happening.”
Get ready for anonymous video everywhere, says Panama app creator originally published by Gigaom, © copyright 2015.
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