If you know what Twitter is all about, then you’ll feel right at home in Seesmic. That is, if you don’t mind people actually seeing your face and hearing your voice. Seesmic is essentially Twitter with video.
With Seesmic though, you see not only what people think (or what they want you to believe they think) but you get a window right into their lives, right into their living rooms and bedrooms and kitchens and offices.
I think that’s the best part of Seesmic. It brings out the voyeur and exhibitionist in all of us. Not that there’s any hanky panky going on, at least none that I could find, hard as I tried (wait, did I say that out loud?)
To use Seesmic you’ll need a camera of course and a mic, but if you’re a little on the shy side, you’ll also need an ounce or two of courage. After all, you’re letting people into your living room, bedroom, kitchen or office too.
There are two user interfaces - the cool flash one and the slightly less cool non-flash version. I prefer the flash one, but for all intents and purposes they work the same.
Here’s a quick tour, from the Seesmic people themselves.
And it’s not hard to make your own videos and get into the conversation. You can do it just a few seconds.
Like other social networking sites, Seesmic is all about the community. It’s all about your friends and followers. You need lots of them to make it fun and so I suggest once you create your account start watching other people’s videos and commenting on them, video commenting of course. As you might have seen in the first video on this page, that little bar at the bottom of each video shows you how many replies there are. Just click it and you’ll be able to watch them and then join the conversation.
The only thing I would have done differently with Seesmic (if I was the King of the internet), is put a time limit on each video. A short time limit, kind of along the lines of the 140 character limits on Twitter, Jaiku and Plurk. I’d say a maximum of one minute would be just about right, otherwise people start to ramble. I’d be more inclined to watch a video, if I knew it would be over in 60 seconds. If it’s boring, my only time investment would be that minute.
There’s another bit of Seesmic-related coolness, that I hope will soon become ubiquitous. A third party comment system called Disqus is using Seesmic for video blog comments.
If you want to be my Seesmic friend, my username, as it is on all social networking sites, is Pleasant.
What do you think? Does Seesmic have a place in the growing social networking world, or is it just a fad that will quickly die out? Have your say in the comments.
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Filed Under: Cool Websites
Tags: microblogging, social networks, Twitter
Hello, thank you so much for your Seesmic review, glad you liked it.
Definetely too shy for that one lol
@Prisqua, c’mon. Just try it once, you’ll love it. And, once you see how everyone else is just Jane and Joe Average you’ll see there’s nothing to be shy about.
Great article! I think this new app will last for a while. I’m thinking about getting an special videocamera, because the built-in webcam in my laptop is kind of limited.
Just curious… where do you get all this stuff from? What RSS do you read, or are you suscribed to any cool newsletter in order to be always finding something different?
Regards from Chile
Hi again, Jason.
What kind of mic are you using at http://seesmic.com/pleasant ?
@chuqui Where do I get it from? I don’t know. I guess I just keep my ears and eyes open to this stuff. I find a lot through the buzz on social networking sites like Plurk and Twitter, but also reading some of the other great blogs out there like Lifehacker and Boing Boing etc.
As for my mic, it’s a professional quality mic. It’s an AKG Perception 200. I use it for the Make Use Of podcast and to do some voice over work. http://tinyurl.com/33gpdw
I must its an interesting idea and with integration into Disqus it should thrive, but who knows. This is the internet and we are used to here today gone tomorrow for so many things on it.