I had no idea what I was getting myself into when I asked for a Press Pass to LeWeb3, which I attended last week in Paris.  I didn't know anything about Loic Le Meur or Seesmic.com, and when I got a free account, I made a couple of online clips and tried to use it to find parties I might go to while I was in Paris (for which it was actually somewhat helpful).

But I didn't know most of what's in a new BusinessWeek Article that was published just now titled A French Twist in Silicon Valley by Jennifer L. Schenker :

"..what really sets Seesmic apart is its business model, which gives a whole new meaning to "building a company online." Every day since setting the company up in October, Le Meur has filmed himself talking about what he needs to do next. He posts the videos on a site, www.loic.tv, whose 5,000 viewers serve as an ad hoc advisory board. "It really is the first time an entrepreneur is using a daily video show to build a company with community on the Web," says Seesmic investor Conway, who also was an early bankroller of Google (GOOG).

In his first video, the affable 35-year-old Le Meur gives viewers a tour of his empty San Francisco office building and asks, "Do you think anyone will accept to work with a French guy?" That question was answered soon enough. Le Meur filmed a job interview with a video editor and then asked his audience whether he should hire her. The answer was yes, and he did. When Seesmic needed a logo, Le Meur asked for help, and viewers organized an online contest that generated 400 entries from around the world. Le Meur paid the winning entrant, a Canadian, $2,000 for his work.

Total Transparency

He has since hired nine other people, including an engineer in Singapore and another in Britain, without ever meeting them, conducting job interviews online via Seesmic videos. He also asked his online audience what features Seesmic should offer. Some 500 were suggested, so he instituted an online voting system to choose the priorities. And when audience members said they worried about intrusive advertising on Seesmic, Le Meur promised he would either find non-annoying ads or switch to a paid-membership system."

I didn't know anything about all of this when i briefly said hello at La Strada nightclub last week -at the Leweb3 party (which was probably a lot tamer than many of the other parties I didn't get invited to….too much of an outsider to this circle – still, I'm glad I was invited).

I guess it's a big deal to get 220,000 visits a month in France – while those traffic numbers aren't that big a deal here (and even Webmetricsguru.com got 216,000 visits in September), it's all relative, with France being a much smaller country – getting 220,000 visits that are targeted is probably a lot of work – and takes a following – and developing a following means people perceive value in the content – in Loic's content, or they would not be consuming it.

"…Indeed, Le Meur is a consummate networker, both online and off. An annual conference on blogging that he started in 2003, now known as LeWeb3, has become one of the premier Internet events in Europe. This year's conference, held on Dec. 11 and 12 in the Paris suburb of La Plaine St. Denis, attracted a raft of Silicon Valley luminaries including Digg founder Kevin Rose, Evan Williams of Twitter, and Robert Scoble, a former Microsoft (MSFT) executive who's now a high-profile blogger. Another attendee was Michael Arrington, the founder of TechCrunch, a Silicon Valley blog site, who's also an investor in Seesmic. Le Meur organizes the conferences with help from his wife, Geraldine, who has joined him in relocating to Silicon Valley, where the couple now lives with their three young sons. "

So, it looks like I walked into a LeWeb3 conference filled with "Power Brokers"; perhaps I was way out of my league, but perhaps not – Perhaps I was exactly where I was supposed to be – in the middle of it all.

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? 

1. 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).
2. 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.

Couldn't help but post this video from Seesmic.com  – is this what I'm going to end up doing by the time I hang out at LeWeb3?

Personally, I'm glad I'm bringing my HP Laptop and not my Thinkpad….. my Thinkpad doesn't have a built in Video Cam, but my HP Pavilion Dv6000 laptop does – and personally, I don't think Seesmic is a much fun without a CAM so you (I) can reply.