vertex to bone conversion

I am not sure if this is at all a handy idea but when I was messing with idTech 4 (Doom 3) engine, there were no vertex animation capabilities, so a fellow named der_ton wrote an export script that added bones to vertex points of a mesh, allowing for complicated animations like the melting Cyberdemon at the end of the "Daikatana 2" Doom 3 mod. Without the exporter, such an animation would not have been possible, or would have been very complicated to animate. I mention this because I am wondering if there would be any file size saved with such export capabilities with B4W. Would a melting sphere animated with bones be a smaller file size than a vertex animated mesh? It does not seem to me that there would be any file size difference, and adding bones may actually make a larger file than a vertex animation export, but it is an idea that I wanted to pass along.

Hi,
Thanks for suggestion!
Such approach really could reduce the file-size, but I think this kind of animation would be possible only for very low-poly objects. If we have, say, 1000 vertices, this will give us 1000 bones, which is not acceptable as we are trying to support a wide range of devices. Any mobile will dislike this idea. And not only mobile, actually.

[EDIT]
And I don't really know how is it possible to control such a huge armature object.