I've noticed an interesting trend on some sites over the past year: The appearance of video comments on blogs, online retailers, and YouTube. After I purchased a Flip video camera from Amazon last fall, I started receiving on-site messages to make my own product reviews and post them to the site. YouTube has encouraged viewers to post video responses to other clips for some time as well, and there are some wonderful music-infused mashups that people have created and posted as reactions to popular clips. Yesterday on TechCrunch, I clicked on a video comment left by a TechCrunch reader, and this morning I see that Arrington et al are promoting the Seesmic video commenting technology on all of their posts.

But how much are video comments adding to the online experience? I see some value in the user-created product reviews, but a comment posted by some guy sitting in front of webcam in his darkened bedroom doesn't really do much for me. I never was a fan of vlogging, but my take on video comments is they are not as efficient as text comments, for both commenters and audiences. Not only do they require more steps to produce, but they also don't let readers quickly scan through the content. It will take me about ten seconds to quickly read through a 150-word comment, but the same comment posted in video format will take about a minute ... and I can't easily jump ahead to interesting themes that catch my eye. Video comments also don't allow links -- although some emerging technologies may eventually change that.

What's your take on video comments? Is it the wave of the future, or will text continue to dominate online discussions?