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Seesmic Doubts

by Stephanie Booth on 17.10.2007

in Social Media and the Web, Technology

[fr]

Le texte et la vidéo sont fondamentalement différents. Je ne pense pas qu'il soit possible de "recréer" un dynamique comme celle de Twitter avec du contenu vidéo.

[en]

So, now that I’ve discovered what Loïc’s startup, Seesmic, is about (thanks to Ben twittering his tests), here is my initial reaction to reading about it on Techcrunch.

I’m not certain a “video-based Twitter” is a viable concept: the huge difference between video and text is that the latter is scannable, and that’s precisely what allows the presence/flow dimension in Twitter. You can “keep an eye” on a stream of text, but can you “keep an eye” on a stream of videos? Also, it takes much less time to keep up with a stream of text than with a stream of videos.

Me, commenting on Techcrunch

Now, not to say that Seesmic is doomed (that would be a bit pretentious of me) — and I haven’t checked it out directly — but I do want to go on record saying that the dynamics created by Twitter and other flow/presence apps with text cannot simply be transferred to other media.

If it turns out I’m right, I’ll be able to say “I told you so” — and if I’m wrong, nobody will care. :-)

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{ 1 trackback }

Climb to the Stars (Stephanie Booth) » Seesmic Addiction
02.01.2008 at 22:37

{ 8 comments… read them below or add one }

1 NatC 17.10.2007 at 11:04

I completely second your comment, that was also my first thought when reading the TechCrunch post. Youtube “conversations” give a clear idea of what makes sense in this area – and it does not include quick and reactive exchanges on daily activities. Things may evolve, but for now it sounds like it’s a “twitter works, online video is a hit, so let’s do twitter on video” kind of idea.
Video FaceBook anyone? :-)

2 Julien 17.10.2007 at 13:48

Never thought about this issue, but this seems so obvious : it’s easier to read twitts than to watch videos. Especially if you follow many friends.

Let’s hope Seesmic is not only a video-twitter (and I guess it’s not).

By the way, I’ve discovered your blog lately and I just want to say : très bon blog, merci ! :)

3 NatC 17.10.2007 at 11:04

I completely second your comment, that was also my first thought when reading the TechCrunch post. Youtube “conversations” give a clear idea of what makes sense in this area – and it does not include quick and reactive exchanges on daily activities. Things may evolve, but for now it sounds like it's a “twitter works, online video is a hit, so let's do twitter on video” kind of idea.
Video FaceBook anyone? :-)

4 Julien 17.10.2007 at 13:48

Never thought about this issue, but this seems so obvious : it's easier to read twitts than to watch videos. Especially if you follow many friends.

Let's hope Seesmic is not only a video-twitter (and I guess it's not).

By the way, I've discovered your blog lately and I just want to say : très bon blog, merci ! :)

5 Christian Scholz 30.10.2007 at 15:40

It actually is also easier to write twits while e.g. at work than to record a video. I watched some of Loic’s video and he seems to have trouble himself to get motivated for the one video per day.. And Twitter is not about one tweet a day but about well, 100s? ;-)

But we will see :-)

6 Christian Scholz 30.10.2007 at 14:40

It actually is also easier to write twits while e.g. at work than to record a video. I watched some of Loic's video and he seems to have trouble himself to get motivated for the one video per day.. And Twitter is not about one tweet a day but about well, 100s? ;-)

But we will see :-)

7 Gary LaPointe 08.05.2008 at 4:03

The ability to take a quick look in the video is a minus. I just did a Seesmic post today on the need for tags (and categories) since it’s so hard to tell what stuff is about. You can’t even have much of a description and the titles get cut off (not much info for the search engines either).

8 Gary LaPointe 08.05.2008 at 4:03

The ability to take a quick look in the video is a minus. I just did a Seesmic post today on the need for tags (and categories) since it's so hard to tell what stuff is about. You can't even have much of a description and the titles get cut off (not much info for the search engines either).

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