So Much for Video Conversations: Seesmic Puts Its Video Service on Hold
When you hear the name Seesmic today, chances are that you are thinking about a Twitter client, but once upon a time, Seesmic was a much-hyped online "video conversation" service. Now, however, after a recent redesign, the Seesmic homepage basically doesn't mention the video service anymore and the video service has moved to its own subdomain. In a new video, Seesmic founder, Loic Le Meur, reveals that Seesmic's video conversation site hasn't seen any growth in the last couple of months and that Seesmic plans to focus on its Twitter client in order to give Seesmic, the company, a chance to survive.
This author argued that video conversations, at least in the way Seesmic envisioned them, simply pose too many barriers of entry to become a mainstream phenomenon. Some of these barriers are technical, but mostly, they are psychological, as a lot of people simply don't feel comfortable in front of a camera. Since Seesmic first launched, the nature of online conversations also changed, asTwitter took off, while Seesmic's video service lingered.
No Growth
It's important to note, though, that Seesmic plans to keep its video service running for the time being, but unless we see a major shift in how users perceive 'video conversations,' we have to wonder if this kind of service has any real future, especially given the asynchronous nature of Seesmic in a time where real-time conversations and video streaming, even from mobile devices, are becoming the norm. In his video, Le Meur also notes that other Twitter-based video services aren't growing right now either, though he hopes that video will be ready to grow again at some point in the future.
Service Still Up, But Completely Deemphasized
We definitely have to give Le Meur credit for keeping the community informed, though. Unlike imeem, which is shutting down parts of its service in the next few days, Seesmic is keeping its service up and running, and the team is communicating with the Seesmic community.
Note: tip of the hat to Allen Stern, who first noticed these changes.
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I think Loic is smart not to shut the video service down entirely. The fact is, online video is the future of the web, and there will come a time where we're more comfortable than we are now in front of a camera.
If he sticks it out, he may be cashing in sooner than we might thing.
When Seesmic introduced video comments last year, we ran a poll here (I can say we 'cause I still worked here then ;)) asking if users would want them on RWW. 67% said no.
http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/video_comments_no_thanks.php
Now, admittedly the results may have been skewed a bit because it came at the end of a post I wrote about why video comments were a bad idea, but still, I think it offers some insight into why Seesmic video isn't working out so well.
Streaming video, like Ustream, and one-to-one live video chat, like Skype, are great. But asynchronous video conversations are just clumsy. With live video you can just listen and respond in real-time, and text is asynchronous, but you can quickly scan it... with Seesmic's implementation you can do neither.
Building your business on top of an AIR powered social network aggregator ... good luck with that one buddy.
We launched our service Hictu.com a few months before Seesmic. It is a video micro blogging service that lets users post "micro" videos and start threads with video comments and discussions.
We immediately realized it was not going to work. We also asked users if they were willing to post videos on it and they responded (over 80%) NO. All the sites where our video commenting widget was placed didn't receive many video comments (close to 0).
My only concern is the following: we had one developer, expenses close to 0 and for us it was a side project. Loic got a lot of money from various investors (a total of 10M or something) and the final result is the same. Fortunately there is the Twitter client thing which is saving Loic, otherwise it would have been a huge failure.
Depite this, I wish Loic all the best with their twitter client, the only thing that could potentially be monetized.
I can say I have never viewed a seesmic video, why would anyone? You can read, scan an article or comment a lot quicker than someone can read or say it to you. If it's not a funny video, I'd rather read an article than watch a video, unless, of course, it's something that you have to see.
@anon +1
One more example of Loic being a master in communication: being transparent, kind and passionate. Good luck regarging Seesmic Chapter 2.
This Was Predicted In Infinite Jest.
Seesmic exists for Loic to have a good time with investors money. It is a real time train wreck with zero chance.
I wrote all this exactly in February 2008.
It was ignored. Because I don't have a penis and I don't merely reiterate Techmeme et al.
Seesmic is dead. Put it in deadpool.
Last year, I tried to use Seesmic the same way I was using Twitter, to plug and market some of my stuff or video news I thought interesting.
I was told to bug out, to take a walk.
It seemed that they wanted to stick to useless self-centered boring casual video conversations. No future there.
Go luck anyway.
@anon +1
Moreover, a social network aggregator built on AIR: it's called TweetDeck and it's free and available already.
Loving Seesmic Desktop – multiple accounts support is great. New 0.3 release has great improvements.
Great app – handles multiple Twitter accounts and Facebook integration seamlessly!
I am late to comment. I explored seesmic video for around 4 months. There is something very compelling, downright magic about it IF you are accepted by the current community and you have enough courage to present yourself on video. There were some great characters to pass through in the time I used the service. It needed communities engineering or something. This method of asynchronous conversation can be magical. I never explored private videos but I got the impression they were used often.
The concept has magic. It was apparent commentators above had a flow of groupthink comments from posters who never used it or barely used it. It can get addictive like eating too much and one must assert not to spend time on it.
There is a magic to be had, a killer app, maybe it is ahead of its time. It does have bugs. Now it is down and broke often, but this is a change. It once worked perfectly for long intervals, so I know what it can do.