{"id":2220,"date":"2008-02-14T09:34:06","date_gmt":"2008-02-14T14:34:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mathewingram.com\/work\/2008\/02\/14\/seesmic-still-dont-really-get-it\/"},"modified":"2008-02-14T09:34:06","modified_gmt":"2008-02-14T14:34:06","slug":"seesmic-still-dont-really-get-it","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/2008\/02\/14\/seesmic-still-dont-really-get-it\/","title":{"rendered":"Seesmic: Still don&#8217;t really get it"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Loic LeMeur&#8217;s video startup, Seesmic, has finally opened up to the public after being a hot beta invite for some time now, but I have to admit that &#8212; while I think it&#8217;s great that Loic has managed to <a href=\"http:\/\/www.loiclemeur.com\/english\/2008\/02\/how-i-started-s.html\">raise $6-million<\/a> from a host of luminaries in the Silicon Valley scene &#8212; I still don&#8217;t really get it. It&#8217;s not just Seesmic either. I don&#8217;t get Qik or Mogulus or Ustream or any of those other video things either.<\/p>\n<p>Maybe it&#8217;s just that I&#8217;m too old (hey, you kids &#8212; knock it off back there) and\/or too ugly and uncharismatic to get the appeal of video multicasting. Let&#8217;s face it, I&#8217;m no <a href=\"http:\/\/1938media.com\">Loren Feldman<\/a>. And that&#8217;s kind of my point. Most people aren&#8217;t Loren Feldman or iJustine or (God forbid) Robert Scoble. Maybe people using Seesmic just want to talk with their friends, and that&#8217;s fine. But I don&#8217;t see it as being a huge deal, really &#8212; or a compelling business, for that matter.<\/p>\n<p>After all, as Valleywag <a href=\"http:\/\/valleywag.com\/356061\/loic-le-meur-raises-6-million-for-videomail-startup\">has pointed out<\/a>, we&#8217;ve had video mail-type apps for a long time now. I remember using video chat as far back as 1996, and I didn&#8217;t really see the point then either. It&#8217;s fun for awhile, but the appeal seems to wane relatively quickly &#8212; at least for me, anyway (and <a href=\"http:\/\/www.lastpodcast.net\/2008\/02\/13\/seesmic-is-open-for-your-business-but-i-already-left\/\">apparently for Frederic<\/a> at The Last Podcast as well).<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;ve said it before &#8212; I just don&#8217;t think video is as compelling a medium for discussion as blogs are. Video can start discussions or conversations, and Loren&#8217;s vlog is a great example of that, but it doesn&#8217;t really lend itself to the back-and-forth that makes blogs so appealing &#8212; plus, you can&#8217;t search it easily, or scan it quickly the way you can with text. <\/p>\n<p>People keep posting Twitter messages saying &#8220;I&#8217;m streaming live &#8212; come chat with me!&#8221; and yet I never do. Why? Maybe I&#8217;m busy, maybe I just don&#8217;t feel like it. The point is, no one ever posts on their blog: &#8220;Hey, I&#8217;m blogging right now &#8212; come comment on my post!&#8221; Blogging is asynchronous in that sense, I guess, and that makes its appeal a lot broader, I think. But then again, I am a print guy  \ud83d\ude42 If you think I&#8217;m wrong, feel free to let me know.<\/p>\n<div class=\"syndication-links\"><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Loic LeMeur&#8217;s video startup, Seesmic, has finally opened up to the public after being a hot beta invite for some time now, but I have to admit that &#8212; while I think it&#8217;s great that Loic has managed to raise $6-million from a host of luminaries in the Silicon Valley scene &#8212; I still don&#8217;t &hellip; <\/p>\n<p class=\"link-more\"><a href=\"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/2008\/02\/14\/seesmic-still-dont-really-get-it\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;Seesmic: Still don&#8217;t really get it&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_crsspst_to_mathewingramblogwordpresscom":false,"mf2_syndication":[],"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2220","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2220","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2220"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2220\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2220"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2220"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2220"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}