Seesmic and Twhirl: Why all the fuss?

So the hot story that is currently top of the pops on Techmeme is that Loic LeMeur’s video-streaming service Seesmic has bought Twhirl. Or rather, Seesmic has acquired Marco Kaiser, who developed Twhirl. Just one question: Why is this such a huge deal? Is it a slow news day? I could see everyone getting excited if Seesmic had bought Twitter itself — but Twhirl is just a client for accessing Twitter, right?

Don’t get me wrong — I think Twhirl is great, and I use it all the time. It’s a great example of an app built using Adobe’s AIR platform, and it has a lot of cool features. But why should I care whether Seesmic owns it now or not? I know Marshall thinks that this is a vision of the Web’s future, but I have to say I remain skeptical on that front (and it seems like others, including my friend Om Malik, share some of that skepticism). If what this deal means is that I get more “I’m streaming — come chat!” invitations every 10 minutes on Twitter, then count me out.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *