I've been using Seesmic a fair amount since last week, when I was invited to create a Beta Account, and I used in while at LeWeb3 in Paris last week - so I'm in a position to weigh in on a recent TechCrunch post by Michael Arrington, who I managed to miss bumping into at LeWeb3, though I was hoping to, who wrote Loren Feldman Trashes Seesmic; Founder Loic Le Meur Takes The Bait earlier tonight.
"…Today Feldman went off on new video startup Seesmic (I am an investor). Since Feldman is a video guy, I would have assumed he’d like Seesmic. But he most certainly doesn’t. He posted a video attacking the site, its founder and its users in a highly aggressive way. Apart from the parts making fun of Europeans, I found it to be funny and included some valid points. "
"….Founder Loic Le Meur, hot off a very successful Le Web conference in Paris, didn’t take it very well. You can sense his frustration in his blog response. The frustration is warranted, but this kind of thing is going to be occurring regularly, Loic. Time to get used to it."
I've used Seesmic a couple of times with my HP Pavilion dv6000 laptop that has a built in Video Cam and I kinda like Seesmic though I think it's still somewhat limited and I'm not yet sure how useful it is in the long run. Still, the things that bother Loren Feldman don't bother me as much (IE: slow loading Flash site, black background) which I accept - it's a non-issue for me at this point.
The content - well, that's another story. Fundamentally, I see Seesmic as half an idea, missing the other half. What's present is entertaining without really being all that useful yet - but I would not go so far as to trash it - it just needs more work and more features to make it really useful - and I believe some of those features will be added, in time.
What's missing?
- Search on Videos (by creator, subject, metadata tagging is also needed for these online clips, but right now, most of what could be added in metadata doesn't amount to much help - just language).
- Social Networking tools need to be enhanced - there's the beginning of it with YouTube and Twitter interlinking (only the Twitter part is working yet though).
I'm also not sure if Seesmic can handle a large number of users - like millions of users - considering the bandwidth requirements of online video - it seems to me that there are high technical challenges with scaling up to a level where this product would be largely adopted or profitable.
You need a Video Cam to really participate in Seesmic - but what if you don't have one? Uploading videos is an option - but might be more trouble than it's worth since it's unlikely to be spontaneous enough.
But lets give Seesmic.com 6 months to a year to work out those issues, and others that I'm sure will be brought up. I'm sure by next year's LeWeb3, Seesmic will either be successful or end up in TechCrunch's Dead-pool - but it's too early to tell which it will be, today.
