Gabble Review

Gabble by HP is an online video sharing service that is geared specifically towards people looking to share videos privately.  In other words, it’s YouTube but exclusively for your family and friends.  The idea behind Gabble is to make it easier for the average user to share videos privately – which I still don’t get because you can make videos private on YouTube with the click of a mouse button.  Here is the breakdown of the features.

The service provides a quick upload feature (very similar to YouTube’s) which limits video recordings to 2 minutes in duration.  However, it also allows you to upload already recorded videos on your computers hard drive which can be up to 100MB in size.  If you upload a video from your computer there is no limit on the duration.  Gabble allows users to create groups to easily share videos with friends and family.  If someone you want to share a video with is not a user on Gabble you can send them a “direct message” which is just an email with a link to the video.

Gabble also created a mobile version of the site where you can browse your groups, play videos, and respond with your pre-recorded Quick Responses.  One thing Gabble did do with the service is made it more difficult to delete videos you create/upload.  Here is there reasoning:

Yes, but it depends. We didn’t want it to be too easy to delete a post from a conversation because then you’ll have holes in the conversation. But there are two cases where posts can be deleted.

I guess it makes sense, but I don’t see why you shouldn’t be able to easily delete a video if you want. However, they do point out the two cases where posts can be deleted:

First, anyone can delete their own post unless someone has replied to it. So, if you want to delete your post, act fast before one of your friends posts a response.

Second, moderators can delete any post that has been flagged by someone. So, if you really want one of your posts deleted, flag it and then ask a moderator to delete it. Keep in mind that our policy states that if a flagged video is not unflagged or deleted within a day or 2 a Gabble admin will remove the video.

HP has been making multiple attempts to get into the web services market and thus far have failed. I personally don’t see this service taking off, simply, because I don’t see a need for it. Most people use YouTube to share videos and I don’t see that changing anytime soon.

Would you use this service?