Seesmic is just video twitter?
Published by on November 26th, 2007
If you are in the geek new media space, then you will have certainly heard of Seesmic - no? then sit up and pay more attention.
Seesmic offer a straightforward way for individuals to have open “conversations” (comments and replies) through brief online video segments. It seems to be just like twitter - the microblogging service - but focuses on video content rather than text content. You can achieve a similar thing with large services such as YouTube of course, but Seesmic has absolutely no clutter to distract from an individual’s video message - at least for now.
What Seesmic have got very right is generating thirst for the service through geek buzz and very limited availability of beta invite codes. You almost have no credibility as a startup in geekdom if you do not apply this method of viral PR. Just monitor a few geeks’ twitter streams and see just how many ask for Seesmic invite codes. And the noise for codes looks like it will get louder as it seems some initial beta testers now have some additional invite codes themselves.
I wonder at whether the service can have such a broad appeal as, for example, twitter. Twitter is text based, so if you are monitoring the messages of dozens of “friends”, all you need do is skim across their texts - which are limited to 140 characters anyway - for anything which flags up as potentially interesting. With a system such as Seesmic, you cannot skim, requiring you to watch/listen to each video to absorb your friends’ message. That takes time, far too much time for broad use in today’s increasingly busy life - broad use compared to twitter and its peers, that is.
On the other hand, I haven’t actually used he service yet, so I may be completely off the mark for what it offers.
Erm… anyone got an invite code so I can play? 
2 Responses to “Seesmic is just video twitter?”
November 26th, 2007 at 4:55 pm
Well, first I would need a webcam working with OSX. Then I would have to be on my dG5 and not my G3 (and on > 0.5 meg ADSL) to watch videos (the video card on this G3 iBook is no good at playing any video without jumping.
I do agree with you, though, that twitter is scannable and this does not sound like it is.
November 26th, 2007 at 8:28 pm
Best bet is to email the guy running it and asking him for an invite code. That’s how I got mine.