Voice Thread What Is It?

I have been introduced to a new website called Voice Thread by my Hyper Media professor. Well, some of you many have the following questions in your mind - What exactly is Voice Thread? Why should I use it? Where can I join this free service? Wait?! Did you mention "Free"? Yup! Voice Thread is a free service whereby you can create your personal video and post it online whereby others can comment on your art works. You can create videos from powerpoint presentations, photo albums, etc.. The possibilities are endless. You can use it to education the community in Voice Thread, to create a presentation video to your peers or simply just to have some good clean fun with video making. You can get all this from voicethread.com

For me, I was interested making my powerpoint slides into Voice Thread videos as I have many slide shows on powerpoint and it would be really great to convert them into videos. This way, I can insert my voice over the video and "ta-dah!" I can present my slides without being there! I created a presentation slide show on, "Why Apple Failed In China - Reasons for iPhone's Failure in the Largest Consumer Market". With that, I simply added it into Voice Thread and got my Video up and ready.

The level of discussion on my Voice Thread is low. This could be because the topic is too dry for the mainstream audiences. It could be more interesting from a marketer's forum and not for a general audience. Yet, there were nice comments made on my Thread. An example would be - "Can Apple change the monthly subscription plans to pre-paid plans just in China?? Isn't it the company's job to fit there product into the condition of the country that they are trying to sell?? >_<" This is interesting as from a marketer's point of view, this could cover 2 important aspects - Brand equity and Sales volume. Failure to adapt to China's market (even if we make exceptions towards the Chinese Consumers) may lead to terrible sales and hence, brand equity may be weaken in China. Apple being an international brand needs to have a strong brand equity in China and this plays to her disadvantage. While, if we did adapt to the local culture, would our markets feel ostracized? This may every well affect International Brand Equity too. Hence, both could bring about trouble yet, we have to look at the lesser of the two evils and decide.

Voice Thread could serve as an alternative to essays and presentations. Yet, this may be difficult (but not impossible) to achieve fast discussions as one may have to wait for another to raise points. But, this can be overcomed by watching the clip at the same time and creating a forum to address all the question raised. Hence, Voice Thread can be a possible replacement, but we may need to add in additional components like forums.