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Disqus Partners With Seesmic for Video Comments
Written by Allen Stern - May 14, 2008
Blog commenting replacement system Disqus is announcing a partnership today with Seesmic today. Not sure exactly what to call Seesmic these days - it's partially a video message board and partially a video blog commenting system. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed. Adam Ostrow first reported on Disqus adding video comments last week.
This deal helps Seesmic more than Disqus. Both companies are currently valley darlings but Disqus seems to have started the slow crawl to mainstream adoption. Seesmic is still in the "figuring out who I am" stage -- which is ok for a new company like Seesmic is. I would have held off on this partnership a few months until Seesmic gains a bit more traction and user adoption. Also, video blog commenting seems about 18 months ahead of its time.
Disqus currently self-reports 13,000 sites actively using their blog comment replacement and Seesmic reports over 300 sites using the video commenting plugin. Check out my commentary on Disqus where I do a deep dive into the pros and cons of using their blog commenting replacement service.
What's interesting is that Seesmic investor Techcrunch launched the video commenting system a couple of weeks ago and so far it's been barely used. And when users have posted videos, most nearly all of them have me wanting my time back. A video comment must have emotion and offer something text can't. Otherwise just post the text and let me read and/or scan and move on. Just because you have a webcam, doesn't mean you should create video comments instead of text comments.
Here's an (extreme) example of a comment that just wasted 30 seconds of my time (this is from the "Wired" post on TC this morning):
Our Partners
wow competition is really heating up here. SezWho just launched a bunch of new features which i am still testing, now i will be eagerly awaiting to see what features Seesmic and Disqus create with this partnership.
all in all though, this arms race should bring much more credibility to blog commenting.
would have loved to comment but I only leave video comments :)
somehow i knew that was coming - your smile Loic only belongs on video - text just doesn't do it justice
Time to dump drupal so you can add video comments too! Wordpress4life!
I don't watch any video comments - why? because I'm at work. And on my non-work time I'm not not glued to the monitor, so therefore I miss all of them. I'll bet I'm hardly alone.
(I am advisor to Seesmic)
Thanks for covering today's news Allen, we're really excited about the partnership with Disqus.
I think your point about TechCrunch comments is a little over- simplistic... I'm really please Mike decided to add Seesmic video comments to TechCrunch (disclosure: he's a minor investor on the company) but due to the nature of the content, I don't think TC is the absolute best example and showcase for video comments.
Personally, I find most of the 'text' based comments on TC often leave a lot to be desired too in terms of relevancy. That's not Mike's fault, that's just the nature of the people who feel the need to comment on TC because many opinion formers would rather 'comment' on their own blog.
Back to Seesmic video comments, we're seeing some great take up of video comments on 'softer' subject blogs, and I think the concept works really well on personal blogs, entertainment/gossip blogs (my wife would love to leave a Seesmic post on Perez Hilton's blog) etc.
I would also agree that we're a little early - but then they said the same about these 'blog things' and look what happened. Sometimes you got to strike out and be bold with these things.
Looking forward to seeing video comments on CenterNetworks - whoever you choose to provide them :)
Ben is there anyone you are not an adviser/consultant for? About to start calling you Ben Milkthecalf.
In any case I do agree, especially in TC's case where the comments typically feature keyboard diarrhea. At this point I'm looking out for video comments, there is a much better chance they contain a meaningful thought or are at least more entertaining.
Sean - Ben is utilizing the strategy similar to the one employed by angel investors - if Ben works with enough startups, at least once will be a success!
AHAHAHAHAHAHAH j/k :-P
Ha, yeah that's basically it.
Also, working with MySpace pays the bills in the meantime (no equity there).
I'm very lucky, but as my wife tells me, I'm also VERY busy.
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