It is a pity the video conversation service is being subordinated although I have used text based conversation tools far more than video, despite how well Seesmic video works. - Paul Jacobson

Interesting how FriendFeed search is becoming how I can permalink to a bunch of different conversations. - Robert Scoble

It is and it isn't - that search could be useless if someone comes back six months later and sees an entirely unrelated batch of new intitle:seesmic threads pop up. A date range would really help for this purpose. I link to FF searches pretty regularly myself so I think about this perhaps more than I ought to. - Daniel J. Pritchett

Daniel: yeah, I wish I could find a way to pin together a bunch of items in a better way than search. - Robert Scoble

How does that kind of change in direction go down with investors? Seesmic raised what 12m for a video based venture which is now essentially a twitter client. Other twitter clients have raised what 300,000? Is it just water under the bridge and they start over? - Jon Dillon

I am glad to see that while they are de-emphasizing the video part of Seesmic they have not gotten rid of it altogether. I for one always had a hard time with the "talking to my computer" part of Seesmic. - Sean Brady

Ah! I have been asking Loic for ages why he hasn't been talking about Seesmic but he just ignored me or didn't notice little old me. I did notice that it all became about Twitter clients and not video conversations. - Mark

I am concerned: can a free twitter client sustain a company and pay back investors? - Mark

@MarshallK used this wacky service (armadillo?) to build a "slideshow" of links to all of the different RWW affiliated Twitter accounts under a single URL. The implications for google juice and the time it would take you to put it together are probably prohibitive but at least the option exists. - Daniel J. Pritchett from IM

I've been watching seesmic video for a long time (watching as in looking to see direction) - when i questioned why loic was using other services and that hurt his seesmic, i was called stupid - maybe now i have a point :) as i noted in my post today - http://www.centernetworks.com/seesmic... - i think loic should just shut it off completely if he is not sure he plans to spend time bringing it back to the forefront. - Allen Stern

@Mark thanks that's really what I was asking in a long worded way - Jon Dillon

Allen: I see a lot of ways he could bring back Seesmic Video. But Loic doesn't listen to me, thinking I'm too geeky and too weird. - Robert Scoble

Arrington has a six figure investment in Seesmic doesn't he? I'd hate to see him have to announce Seesmic is in the deadpool in one of those posts he puts up about companies that fail. - Mark

It's always the early adopters and geeks who make something work and who bring it to bigger audiences. Always. Yet entrepreneurs get together and say "don't listen to Scoble." Even FriendFeed is doing that now. - Robert Scoble

continuing - at an event this week, fred wilson talked about why an audio twitter (i posted a video about this) might not work - he talked about how important text is - i think its the same for the video - i wrote about this when seesmic first launched - there was no threading on seesmic, do i really want to see you for your comment? did it take too long to make a video versus typing in a quick comment, etc? - Allen Stern

Seesmic has 12 million in funding? If thats true they surely need something more than a free twitter client? - Mark

@allen agreed. - Patricia

The reason we didn't like Seesmic is it got too noisy. This is why Kyte went almost wholly with celebrities (and why Twitter did too). They realized that's the way to bigger audiences. But Seesmic didn't provide celebrities a way to lock down their brands and interact with just who they wanted to interact with. If they had done that it would have taken off big time. - Robert Scoble

My hair was always too messy in the home office to use video. - James Watters

I got the figure of here: http://www.crunchbase.com/company... - Jon Dillon

That video from Loic is brutally honest isn't it? I almost feel sorry for him on a personal level that it hasn't worked out - he is such a sweet guy. - Mark

Robert hearts famous peoples?? hmm - James Watters

but more than anything and i hate to harp on this point, loic missed some huge opportunities by not posting his leweb on seesmic and to post all his videos on youtube. - Allen Stern

interesting points about the investment vc - didn't even think about that! - Allen Stern

I would use it on Building43, for instance, to talk with people like Matt Cutts and Chris Messina. But the thing is that Loic didn't see that, and instead thought there was value in building an open to everyone video chat room. YouTube just provided enough of what we need with iPhone 3GS video uploads. - Robert Scoble

Well Youtube is nice and widescreen and can do HD, the little crappy player on seesmic would look awful for Leweb coverage - Mark

Confirmed: they have 12 million of other peoples money involved :/ - Mark

Robert, honestly, we realized this with Hictu.com months ago. The difference is: investments close to 0, one developer, side project for us. Seesmic: 12M in investments, core service... I hope they will be able to monetize that Twitter client... otherwise they will end up burning the cash they have, end of the story. - Luca Filigheddu

good thing they didn't shut down the whole video service. while some people don't like to see themselves, the technology has potential. if it dies out, then some might defacto to the saying 'it was ahead of its time.' how many times have tech companies went out of business or stopped a service that would have been relevant later on? it's a good idea to keep it alive in some way while focusing on core competencies that would help generate revenue for them. - sɹǝɥʇɐǝɟʞɔɐןq

How do you monetise a twitter client? Without pissing peopel off so they go to free one / ad free etc - Mark

Mark: lots of people have paid for Twitter clients on iPhones. On free ones they will be ad supported. Plus you can charge for extra "pro" features. Eventually there will be virtual goods that you can sell (ability to sell things to other people, too). - Robert Scoble

@Mark, you recognize that two way communication platforms are a utility, like the phone, and you charge upsell services that users want/use. these platforms are not true ad play platforms -- they are utility platforms. They can be, but traditionally, ads have never done well with utility platforms. - Patricia

I remember watching Scoble and Loic and others on a bus a few years ago going to a convention in Las Vegas I think and Loic was talking about Seesmic. It all seemed so exciting 2 years ago. - Mark

Loic's putting his energy / money where the 'buzz' is and that's Twitter (right now) Looks like that could change though: http://www.thetechnewsblog.com/2009... - Jim Connolly

As mentioned on the other thread about this, video commenting was shown at the VON show in like 2005 or something. Unfortunately, the user base drives what works and what doesn't and they've not evolved enough for applications like this on a mass, money making level. - Patricia

Problem is you don't invest 12M in a twitter client start up--that's poisinous - James Watters

right now tweetdeck has to be the top (or one of the top) most useful twitter app around. it seems as if loic wants to get this momentum going. its popularity and userbase has potential. if loic wants to build a lemonade stand, then he can start selling lemonade too. :) - sɹǝɥʇɐǝɟʞɔɐןq

James: yeah, thats terrifying. - Mark

Twitter clients could be the next browsers, so I can see the sense in that, but I was looking fwd to seeing Seesmic on the iPhone as a video equivalent to audioBoo, hope that still happens. - Chris Nuttall

Seesmic was over-funded. There are other companies with awesome ideas that struggle to get 500K... Ans 12M are too much even for a Twitter client only. - Luca Filigheddu

I know I can't get over this number 12 million. He has a competitor with a service called PHREADZ or something which is virtually self funded and as least as slick. I cannot fathom what 12 million buys. - Mark

12M buys a competitive startup to youtube with heavy infrastrucure expenses; 3 weeks of expert coding buys you a twitter client - James Watters

I imagine the hardware on the back end needed to handle the video and originally estimated traffic must have munched a fair chunk of change already - Jon Dillon

So any social media experts in here want to suggest what they did wrong? Why did video conversations fail? - Mark

They failed because unlike FB and Twitter you can't do them impulsively; the RWW is all about what you can extract from a users life in under 20 seconds without them thinking about it - James Watters

@mark years ago everyone was pushing mobile video calling in Italy. Lots of investments, TV ads and so on. It failed. Why? It takes too much time, you have less privacy, not that easy for many people, don't really need it. - Luca Filigheddu

We had a similar thing here in England, 3g video calling, but to be honest most of us only use it for rude video calls with significant others. - Mark

@mark ok, so you know what I mean... ;-) - Luca Filigheddu

@mark, i'm not a social media expert, but i think what they (and tons) of people in web 2.0 have done wrong is fail to really look at what the user needs and does. sometimes ideas are just too early for the users (or enough users) to adopt, some are simply just not something users find valuable. at the end of the day, always what works online is what the users find valuable and what the users can adopt. - Patricia

Patricia: yup, that's why funding startups is risky. Out of 10s of thousands of ideas for companies only a handful become significant. You try things, and you try to change human behavior. Some, like Twitter, get lucky and find the way. Many others die at the vine for a whole lot of reasons. - Robert Scoble

here is my post from over a year ago - http://www.centernetworks.com/seesmic... - where i talk about why seesmic won't work (the video service) - not 100% sure it's all still appicable today - btw for those wondering if seesmic the twitter client will succeed - remember that loic has very tight contacts at FB, etc. he even got a 4-letter vanity url - will those connections help his tool grow past tweetdeck, sobees, etc? only time will tell - my guess is that the funding spent on the video tech is gone - but the education should remain. - Allen Stern

I don't think the people who spent 12 million on the video tech will be pleased that their money is gone but the education remains ;) - Mark

Mark: Seesmic only spent a fraction of their money. - Robert Scoble

i think seesmic also changed their staffing model - moving from a completely sf based team to mostly offshore teams - loic mentioned something about going to meet the teams in eastern europe a few weeks ago - Allen Stern

Bah! I am all about American Jobs ;) Hang on.. I am British. - Mark

Seesmic as a technology play was pretty good. I think the problem is that video commenting is simply viewed as a huge time suck to most people in an era when anything over 140 characters is considered too lengthy to consume. - Aviv

Video fail - users can't quickly consume video content; impossible to skim or index effectively. - Susan Beebe from BuddyFeed