Apr

4

Seesmic buys Twhirl: it’s still video voicemail and few people will care

April 4, 2008 |

image Dave Winer says Seemic buying Twhirl is all about the users, but also about keeping Seesmic in the conversation:

Another reason it’s potentially a brilliant move is that it keeps Seesmic in the conversation. After an initial rollout that made Seesmic the talk of the town for a couple of months, now the cursor has moved on (not sure where), and Seesmic isn’t that much the topic du jour. With a Twitter client with say 10K or 20K users (they’ve had 100K downloads) now there are all those people that Loic can pitch daily in hopefully a tasteful not too intrusive way.

Seesmic does indeed need some PR boost. The Alexa graph for Seesmic points down sharply - and even if Alexa data is a bit sketchy when it comes to the raw numbers, that’s not a good sign for a service that wants to reach mainstream success and can only be used on the site itself.

I think the problem with Seesmic is incredibly simple: there just isn’t a lot of public interest in doing video voicemail.

I’m sure in some boardroom, the idea of doing a “Twitter but for video” sounded great, but it has so little to do with how people use Twitter or video on the net. Twitter is about receiving and sending a quick burst of information - it takes seconds to write a tweet and then you move on. I can scan hundreds of tweets a minute and decide if I want to reply or not.

Now video is already a niche market because very few people actually feel comfortable in front of a camera. But then watching a video is also a major investment in my time and cerebral resources compared to scanning a short sentence. Given this, it just becomes immediately clear why Seesmic isn’t going to be a huge success (and Dave Winer should feel good not investing in it).

I wish Loic all the best, but I don’t think buying a Twitter client is going to make much of a difference in terms of users. Users are fickle - slam them in the face with some video software that suddenly pops up in their Twitter client (which they most probably chose for the simplicity of it) and they move on to Snitter.

Technorati tags: , ,

Share This

Related Posts

Comments

3 Comments so far

  1. Corvida on April 4, 2008 12:32 pm

    Very true. It would be a great way to do video bitchmeme’s though, but I don’t even own a webcam and I don’t watch too many videos online unless it’s a product review.

    Messaging someone through video, I just don’t see that concept taking off at all unless it’s to respond to vent about something. I think it’s a lose-lose regardless.

  2. Frederic on April 4, 2008 12:35 pm

    Video bitchmemes - I’m not sure I’m quite ready for that…

  3. Alan Wilensky on April 4, 2008 2:42 pm

    And let’s face it, people are generally not as
    attractive as guys like us. There is a popular gal on twitter all the time, a real brain, a thought leader, and a truly wired gal.

    But, and I’m just using this as an example, watching her on Seesmic is a non-happy experience - even watching a dynamic personality like me is no great shakes. Who needs it?

    http://bizcast.typepad.com/clients/2006/08/inside_scoop_on.html

Name (required)

Email (required)

Website

Speak your mind