Anyone who uses Twitter and follows Loïc Le Meur there will know about his Seesmic video streaming product. It’s currently in a closed beta.
For me, the clearest simple explanation of what Seesmic is or does, is that it is like Twitter on video.
In this video (via William Smith), Loïc introduces Seesmic and provides some examples of people using it.
For those of us fortunate enough to have scored an invitation to test Seesmic (thanks Duncan, yes I do owe you) the community aspect and participant creativity is evident (I like Robert Scoble’s preference for the term “participant” over “user” in relation to social media). There is such a sense of fun and willingness of people to just hop in and test out this technology that it is easy to fall into line and make something, however dorky it might make you feel.So yesterday, with a certain degree of discomfort (what will I say?) I bit the bullet and made a short Seesmic video, which I titled “diving in”. While I have no illusions about the result having any chance of winning prizes, I have to say there was a sense of breakthrough in hitting the Save Video button (it was my third or fourth attempt, not because of any problem with the system – just that I thought the first efforts were so bad!).
Basic stuff? Of course. But that’s part of the appeal. Just as the 140 character limit on a Twitter tweet means that you simply can’t craft an elaborate, graceful paragraph, much less a page, of text, so Seesmic’s simple interface gives you permission, so to speak, to keep the contribution simple and direct.Maybe that will change, but for the moment I suspect it will help a lot of people make the break into using video to communicate in a Twitter-like, “microblogging” way.
Robert Scoble, in a post which is largely about his explaining aspects of his departure from PodTech, writes very interestingly about Seesmic – especially interesting because he is so heavily into video blogging/video streaming/online tv:
I’m watching how Loic Le Meur is building Seesmic by including the community into every decision he makes. His software doesn’t have the most features out there (Kyte.tv beats it by a mile, particularly on the mobile phone side of things, which is why I love Kyte so much) but Le Meur is building up a ton of love in the community for his approach.
The participants are in control there. It is your business.
In a brief review of Seesmic, JoCoWash acknowledges that Seesmic lacks a number of features of other video services but thinks that may not be such a bad thing:
Although there are so many video sharing services out there, I think this one may have a chance because, unlike other services, Seesmic is easy and fun – Two key ingredients for a great user experience.
If you’ve posted a Seesmic video – or several – please feel free to share it by leaving the link in the comments here.
