Seesmic is dubbed as a twitter for videos. That’s a great tagline but does it work in practice?
Im on the fence.
Fundamentally I don’t think the idea works. Conversations dont seem to flow. Unlike text you can’t quickly scan a video to get a sense for the quality of the piece. This is Seesmic’s biggest problem, and its a major one. Seesmic’s all about video conversations and that aspect of it just doesn’t seem to work efficiently.
Its difficult to say if Seesmic will achieve mainstream success.
One of the reasons for Twitters success is that its so quick and dirty to fire off a text message. Uploading a video isn’t as convenient.
Speaking of convenience, I didnt like the all flash interface. There were a few times where pressing the back button didnt have the desired effect. Also I didnt like the fact that when hovering over a link with my mouse the cursor didnt change to the hand icon. This may sound like a minor gripe but believe me usability experts would be all over this.
Seesmic naturally has to worry about YouTube. All YouTube has to do is create a “conversations” subdomain, and replace text comments with video comments and it will either help Seesmic by shining some light on this space or it will be lights out Seesmic. Im guessing it would be the latter.
There doesn’t seem to be a business model in place. Im sure at some point it will be monetized by ads but right now its not clear how Seesmic will make money.
At first I wasn’t sure what was so special about “video conversations”. That is, what does the video aspect add to a conversation. It took a bit but it soon became clear, the videos do seem more personal. You seem to be a bit more connected to the author, since you can pick up on visual and audio clues such as tone of voice and style. After watching a quick video of a particular user it was clear to me that he was the lazy, eccentric type. These types of traits can’t be realized as quickly when dealing with just text.
Since its easy to connect with users because of the personal nature of videos, it should be very easy for Seesmic to foster a community.
Another positive Seesmic has going for it is its backers. Checkout the bottom of this post (how I started Seesmic and raised 6 million) for a list. I wouldn’t bet against these guys. While there is no guarantee of success, with those backers Seesmic will have every chance to succeed…
… but its going to be an uphill battle.
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March 17th, 2008 at 5:37 am
Uphill battle indeed.
I hope Im wrong but I don’t see Seesmic doing much better than a niche audience.
They need to make some changes and whatever they are they need to be made soon. If Twitter put videos in Tweets then Seesmic would be dead in the water.
Because of its all star investors Im really looking forward to see how Seesmic plays out.
July 8th, 2008 at 4:43 pm
It seems to an interesting concept. I like the idea of integrating it with Disqus so that comments can be posted in the form of video. That’s a great idea and if it takes off will take posting comments to a whole new level.