Two things. A) Without video, what does Seesmic make? Another Twitter client? Really, what's this "good for the business" talk? It seems the only other aspect of the business (that I see at least) is piggybacking on top of another business - and doing what numerous others have done and are doing.
B) Where are all the seesmic folks running to continue their conversations? YouTube?
Bonus C) Anyone know what Disqus's plans are (if any) for when Seesmic drops video?
Rob Blatt
· 1 month ago
Yikes! I am woefully behind in replying to you.
a. yeah, it seems that Seesmic is currently in the twitter and facebook client business. I'm not sure how an entire company runs on this business model, especially when TweetDeck is only one man, but we'll see. They have plenty of cash to run with, so this won't end soon.
b. The Seesmic folks have scattered into a million little places, mostly email, Twitter and 12Seconds. Every now and then there is an influx of people back to Seesmic for a night, but that's about it.
c. Not sure, but they're a pretty communicative company. They might answer a straight to them inquiry. I would imagine they could adopt Phreadz instead.
mluschek
· 5 months ago
Now that they've successfully destroyed Seesmic, they're going to focus on driving Twhirl into the ground.
DeanWhitbread
· 6 months ago
"There is no button to download the videos to your server." - yes there is. Log in -> Outbox -> Go To Video. You are given FLV and MP4 options.
I was referring to more of what Disqus offers to sync comments. Yes, you can download individual files, but how would Freida go about doing that? At this point she has more than 15,000 videos on the site. Aside from using some hackery that would take her more time than creating the content took!
DeanWhitbread
· 6 months ago
I used a Firefox plug in called DownloadThemAll when I grabbed all of mine. Took a while, but I got every one of them.
kosso
· 6 months ago
oddly enough, I was telling brad last night about something I plan to do for phreadz eventually: offer a 'render/download archive' link for users to download all their posts in a format/way for them to be 'burnable' to disc with the ability to view their own recorded posts WITH the conversation/threads in place for offline viewing - and then link to the online posts and replies of posts from others or from other places (need to be online)
as a user of places where I've often wanted to backup/archive all my posts (before potentially deleting my account) I'd like to figure out a way to do this for phreadz users.
It's all 'codeable' ;) like most things ;)
kosso
· 6 months ago
another thing I plan to offer (it's actually already there, but not 'open') is the ability for users to to enter/store their own server ftp details, so that posts they record using phreadz get saved on their own servers - rather like blogger.com does with blog posts.
only trouble is: the save process can take longer (unless I create a post-post queuing process) - and if their server goes away, the conversations/threads would break too -> 404
Rob Blatt
· 5 months ago
So when is the comment plugin coming? ;)
Well, if their server goes away, then in theory that's the content they wanted to have control over. It becomes more interesting when from your point of view, their "take my ball and go home" attitude by shutting down the server would partially break your service. I think that Disqus has a good thing going when they record a copy of comments to a WP blog and to their own servers to display on their site. In that regard, you'd be creating a "backup" of the users videos on their own server, with the originals on yours. That seems like an informational and logistical nightmare to me, and I don't even want to begin to think about how that would work.
DeanWhitbread
· 6 months ago
"Has the “free” economy hampered our ability to depend on the services that we use? .... What damage can these companies do to us if they decide to close shop? " - this is the nub of your article and it is entirely valid. Nobody thought the banking system would collapse, but it damn near did.
At least Disqus doesn't steal your comments - they still exist in your Wordpress. As well as the sites you mention, the same goes for short URL services, and hundreds (thousands?) of Twitter sites. What happens when Twitter changes in order to make money? As it is, everyone howls with anguish when they even tweak their free service, let alone grow it into something actually economically viable.
Brian Ginn
· 6 months ago
I agree with your comment about losing the video if the site fails or wants to drop them. I've always wanted a way for the user to control their content, share it yet keep it in their control. Like email. I like gmail but I use a old-fashioned mail app to keep archives of what I can. Even Gmail has made this not as good as in the past ( I've notice recently not all the mail comes in as it once did to my mail app ). Good to read your words.
Rob Blatt
· 6 months ago
Thanks for the comment. Relying on third party sites has been at the forefront of my mind lately. I know that if WordPress goes under as a company, I can still run my blog on the software. If Flickr goes under, I have nowhere else that I put my photos online. I guess this is the trade that we make for server space.
Ohdoctah
· 6 months ago
i could never make myself use seesmic.. I want to I think its a good idea.. but I cant use it!..
Rob Blatt
· 6 months ago
This is the problem that Sol addressed in his 12Seconds blog post. Seesmic is threaded video conversations, not social video. Our conversation is happening elsewhere, not on Seesmic. The video isn't social.
andyosaurus
· 5 months ago
"Seesmic is threaded video conversations, not social video." "The video isn't social." Could you explain what this means? I literally don't understand.
Personally, I can't get into 12 seconds because the limitation makes every message feel like I'm writing an epitaph, pardon the morbidity.
Rob Blatt
· 5 months ago
The video you create on Seesmic isn't meant to be social the same way that a singular forum post doesn't stand up on its own as a tweet or blog post. The intention of Seesmic Video is/was to foster conversations, not to create video to be shared. The point of 12Seconds is to create video that is to be shared. You COULD have a conversation using 12Seconds, but that's not the primary purpose.
I got into 12Seconds by answering their challenges on a regular basis. I got the hang of the limitation over time and now I love it.
All Comments
A) Without video, what does Seesmic make? Another Twitter client? Really, what's this "good for the business" talk? It seems the only other aspect of the business (that I see at least) is piggybacking on top of another business - and doing what numerous others have done and are doing.
B) Where are all the seesmic folks running to continue their conversations? YouTube?
Bonus C) Anyone know what Disqus's plans are (if any) for when Seesmic drops video?
a. yeah, it seems that Seesmic is currently in the twitter and facebook client business. I'm not sure how an entire company runs on this business model, especially when TweetDeck is only one man, but we'll see. They have plenty of cash to run with, so this won't end soon.
b. The Seesmic folks have scattered into a million little places, mostly email, Twitter and 12Seconds. Every now and then there is an influx of people back to Seesmic for a night, but that's about it.
c. Not sure, but they're a pretty communicative company. They might answer a straight to them inquiry. I would imagine they could adopt Phreadz instead.
http://video.seesmic.com/videos/0r6eVDdfJU
as a user of places where I've often wanted to backup/archive all my posts (before potentially deleting my account) I'd like to figure out a way to do this for phreadz users.
It's all 'codeable' ;) like most things ;)
only trouble is: the save process can take longer (unless I create a post-post queuing process) - and if their server goes away, the conversations/threads would break too -> 404
Well, if their server goes away, then in theory that's the content they wanted to have control over. It becomes more interesting when from your point of view, their "take my ball and go home" attitude by shutting down the server would partially break your service. I think that Disqus has a good thing going when they record a copy of comments to a WP blog and to their own servers to display on their site. In that regard, you'd be creating a "backup" of the users videos on their own server, with the originals on yours. That seems like an informational and logistical nightmare to me, and I don't even want to begin to think about how that would work.
At least Disqus doesn't steal your comments - they still exist in your Wordpress. As well as the sites you mention, the same goes for short URL services, and hundreds (thousands?) of Twitter sites. What happens when Twitter changes in order to make money? As it is, everyone howls with anguish when they even tweak their free service, let alone grow it into something actually economically viable.
Personally, I can't get into 12 seconds because the limitation makes every message feel like I'm writing an epitaph, pardon the morbidity.
I got into 12Seconds by answering their challenges on a regular basis. I got the hang of the limitation over time and now I love it.