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Word To The Wise Devs: Don't Compete With Platforms

nickoneill — Fri, 16 Apr 2010 14:10:04 +0000

Last night I read Loic LeMeur’s article about how his company wasn’t f*cked by Twitter and I can’t help but feel like you’re listening to somebody who’s in denial. The problem is not that Seesmic doesn’t have a brand built, but instead that if the company doesn’t pivot at this critical juncture, they’ll end up screwing themselves over. The reason is that applications competing with platforms is always a losing game.
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New Seesmic Player Launches, iPhone Version Will Be Killer

nickoneill — Fri, 20 Jun 2008 11:34:09 +0000

Seesmic has released a new version of their player and I have to say that it is pretty amazing. The player has threaded comments and the ability to embed the player elsewhere. This is extremely powerful because it means that the conversation can literally be transported to another site. Take for instance the following conversation started by Duncan Riley at the Inquisitr:

The concept that the conversation can literally be transported anywhere is one step beyond what Disqus is currently offering with their blog comments solution. The idea of video comments makes a lot of sense but I think it makes even more sense on a mobile device. Ultimately when I’m in front of my computer it’s easier for me to type out my messages faster than I say them.

Then again, perhaps that’s why I have a written blog instead of a video blog. While each person has their own preference of video versus text, I think that when traveling, video could be more convenient. For instance, imagine a video conversation being shared with your friends about where you’d like to go for the evening.

Rather than having a threaded text you can have a threaded video conversation and the background of your friends in their videos adds a ton of context to the message. Overall, while I personally not an active video commenter, I think that this new feature is a killer one. I can’t wait for the iPhone version to launch. Do you think the threaded video comments player is useful?

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Are Video Comments Going Mainstream?

nickoneill — Wed, 14 May 2008 11:18:31 +0000

Fred Wilson has announced that Disqus and Seesmic are teaming up to provide video comments. I’ve already added Seesmic commenting to this site and aside from the one post where I announced that I’d support Seesmic comments, nobody has used it. There appears to be a debate now over whether or not video comments make much sense.

My thoughts are that video commenting provides a great alternative for those that prefer to use video instead of text. If that wasn’t the most obvious response, I don’t know what is. Loren Feldman is a good example of somebody that benefits from video comments. YouTube is already the center of video commenting and now it is extending to blogs. We will continue to see more written comments than video comments on blogs though.

Some people communicate more effectively through video and some people communicate more effectively for writing. That’s the difference between bloggers and vloggers. I unfortunately have not taken advantage of Disqus because for some reason I like owning the comments on my blog. Call me crazy but it’s a personal preference. Disqus is a great way to get comments up and running on your site though and I have a feeling that it may spread the same way MyBlogLog did, I’m just not one of the users for the time being.

Do you think video comments are mainstream? Have you been using them at all? Have you or would you install Disqus on your own site?

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Does Video Twitter Make Sense?

nickoneill — Fri, 04 Apr 2008 09:59:13 +0000

Last night Techcrunch and Loic Le Meur announced Seesmic’s acquisition of Twhirl, an application we previously reviewed on our site. I got the beta invite to Seesmic a few months back and tried it out once. I had some serious issues with Seesmic. The main issue was that it takes way too long to post a video and listen to a video playback then read a maximum 140 character message.

Loic appears to be making a smart move with the Twhirl acquisition because now your videos can fit directly into the application. This is similar to the video commenting feature provided by Viddler. I’ve seen a few people use this added feature but so far all of the video comments I’ve seen have been half a second long and of no significant value.

Will you take the time to leave a video comment in reply to a Tweet? I’m sure Loic sure thinks so but based on the lack of growth of the site it’s hard to see where the value is. There are not as many avid Seesmic users as there are Twitter users but then again it only launched around 6 months ago so it hasn’t had time to “cross the chasm.” Do you think Seesmic will succeed?

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