Seesmic Archive

This morning Facebook announced the launch of Facebook Connect for Mobile. During the presentation, Seesmic CEO Loic LeMeur announced the launch of Seesmic for Facebook. Basically Seesmic is growing today – it’s no longer just videos only. The Twirhl name is going to be replaced with Seesmic over time. Seesmic for Facebook is starting out as an Adobe Air client that reads your social stream. Over time Loic tells me the video component of Seesmic will also be integrated.

I was able to capture a quick video with Loic about the new launch today.

Earlier this week I wondered why the LeWeb conference in Paris wasn’t utilizing the Seesmic video service. I questioned the decision both from an overall video coverage standpoint and also from the "conversational" standpoint. I still believe there were so many places that Seesmic could have been injected to provide value to those at the conference, viewers at home and most importantly the Seesmic company itself.

This morning LeWeb organizer and Seesmic CEO Loic LeMeur replied to my post via Twitter:

When Pownce announced their "all sales final" closing sale, I wondered if the service would have fared better if Internet celebrity co-founder Kevin Rose had pushed the service instead of pushing everyone into their competitor, Twitter. Today I have the same question about LeWeb organizer and Seesmic CEO Loic LeMeur.

I interviewed Loic back in September and since then he’s fired a bunch of the Seesmic staff. I think there have been a lot of questions about how Seesmic will generate real revenue and growth past their loyal users, like Freida, who clearly make up the majority of the videos on Seesmic.

LeWeb is a major tech conference currently going on in Paris, France. The conference costs 1500 Euros for the two-days of discussions and startup presentations. You can check out the instant conversations about LeWeb via Twitter Search (leweb and leweb08).

My beef is that Loic selected Ustream to run live coverage of the conference. There is absolutely no reason that this conference needed to be broadcast live. First, if I paid $2,000 to attend, I’d be pissed that my sister could sit at home and watch it for free. Second and even more importantly, Loic runs a video platform! These two days could have provided an amazing opportunity for Seesmic to gain trial users, awareness, and general system usage.

Loic could have easily recorded each session, uploaded it to Seesmic and generated a masive amount of video discussion inside his platform — instead he "left the money on the table" by allowing the conversation to take place on Twitter. Certainly there would be conversation on Twitter anyway, but Seesmic could have offered a way for people to interact via video about the conference from anywhere in the world. Speakers could have been required to participate in the video conversation via Seesmic stations setup at LeWeb. Had he used Seesmic, the videos would have been available minutes after each session concluded. I understand that there are logistics issues to deal with regarding bandwidth and connections on Seesmic but there was plenty of time to handle these issues.

Loic missed a golden opportunity to introduce thousands of people (both in Paris and watching from home) to his video platform Seesmic. From what I can tell, there’s been nearly no conversation about LeWeb on Seesmic. Bottom line: If you don’t use your own system, it’s hard to get others to do so.

Seesmic CEO Loic LeMeur has reported today that he has cut 7 headcount from the Seesmic workforce today. This is in addition to the 3 people who were let go last month. I’ve reached out to Loic to get an idea of how what percentage of total employees this headcount reduction accounts for – when I met Loic at the Seesmic office last month, it seemed like there were about 10 people there but I believe they have an office in France as well.

Update: Liz Gannes says Seesmic has about 13 employees after those let go today.

Seesmic has raised $12 million in venture capital funding to-date. Loic has created a video to explain about the headcount reduction:

Tough times. Tough decisions.also read my blog post http://www.loiclemeur.com/english/2008/10/tough-times-tou.html

Best of luck to everyone who was let go – if I can be of any assistance with connections, let me know.

During my trip to the west coast, I sat down with Seesmic CEO Loic LeMeur for a demo of the new Seesmic mobile application. I was able to grab an exclusive video demo with Loic and I’ve embedded the demo below. The Seesmic mobile application allows Seesmic users to record videos, watch videos and reply to videos in the normal Seesmic message board threaded fashion utilized on the Seesmic Web site.

The service works on the Nokia N95 and other Symbian mobile devices. I asked LeMeur to compare the application to live mobile video streaming applications Kyte, Flixwagon and Qik. LeMeur explained that the Seesmic mobile application isn’t a live streaming application but rather a way to interact in the video conversation. When a video is uploaded via the mobile, users can select to have a message sent to their Twitter account information their friends of their new video upload.

If you are interested in learning more about Seesmic, check out my video interview with LeMeur from earlier this month. Here’s the video demo:

I met with Seesmic CEO Loic LeMeur earlier this week. Loic describes Seesmic as a video conversation platform. Loic and I discussed the Seesmic platform, video comments on blogs, service status, the Seesmic business model and his thoughts on mobile integration. Loic shared that Seesmic has over 500,000 videos and just under 1 million visitors a month.

Here’s my chat with Loic – note that I planned to put this video on Seesmic but it was over 10 minutes which is the Seesmic length.

I had the opportunity to sit down with Seesmic/Twhirl CEO Loic LeMeur at their office in San Francisco. We discussed the Techcrunch50 conference including which startups Loic liked, which startups he didn’t like, the expert judging process and how the winner was selected. We also talk about dead people. Loic also reviewed the first anniversary party for Seesmic.

Here’s Loic: