Do You Converse Through Video? You Can with Seesmic!

Seesmic’s video service is specifically about enabling asynchronous video conversations for you. That means, in plain English, off-line recording of your message or reply for your video chat. They are also about to add slew of new features, including private groups, the option to block individual users from your Seesmic player, and letting users flag offensive content (e.g. porn).





While search is a currently a big problem for them, they plan to address it in several ways:

(1) Give you the option of adding meta-data to your videos (description, tags, etc.)
(2) Employ automated audio-to-text software to create transcripts, and
(3) Since Seesmic videos are already on Google, enable you to use Google Video search.

With apps for both Facebook and OpenSocial slated to be released in August, Seesmic hopes to draw more teen and college-age users.

One of the problems with following conversations on Seesmic is that unlike text, there isn't a way to skim through video. Some people just take longer to get their point across. Assuming a 2-minute per video average, a conversation involving 60 posts/replies would take two hours to view from start to finish. Pierre Omidyar, a board member, started a Seesmic thread on the possibility of limiting videos to 30 seconds (a la twitter), but for the moment, there are no plans for that. But there are plans for tools to filter out long videos and to display limited portions for faster viewing.

One month after their public launch, here are some key metrics:

• 23,000 unique users from 25 countries (about 50% are from the U.S.)
• 3,000 videos are uploaded each day (total of slightly more than 300K videos)
• Average length of a video is 2 minutes
• 30 million page views (doesn't include videos viewed through their API) - VERY IMPRESSIVE!

The Seesmic community not only provides valuable input for the product team, they have also put together impressive mashups and visualizations.

My favorites so far are a Youtube and Seesmic mashup

for people conversing in sign language, and a visual of conversations related to the recently released French hostage, Ingrid Betancourt. If you download the PicLens
http://milliondollarwebtv.com/makeitvblog/?p=261

Firefox plugin, a Seesmic user created a fun tool to help you quickly navigate all the videos posted by a particular user: try this sample search ("junemarshall") and set options to 3D Wall.
Seesmic has, very wisely, partnered with a number of web services, to enable you to make the most of your video chats:

Disqus
makes your comments more interactive for readers and easier to manage for you — all while connecting your community with other blogs.

FriendFeed
keeps you up-to-date on the web pages, photos, videos and music that your friends and family are sharing. It offers a unique way to discover and discuss information among friends.

NetVibes
lets individuals assemble all-in-one place their favorite widgets, websites, blogs, email accounts, social networks, search engines, instant messengers, photos, videos, podcasts, and everything else they enjoy on the Web.

ShoZu
use ShoZu to instantly post your camera phone videos to Seemsic. Simply capture the moment, and with a click, post your blog quality or full res (up to 10MB in size!) video to your Seesmic community. Why wait until you're back in front of a computer to post your videos?

SproutBuilder
is the quick and easy way for anyone to build, publish, and manage widgets, mini-sites, mashups, banners and more.

Twhirl
allows users to access the Twitter service directly from their desktop, and also cross post to other services like Pownce and Jaiku.

WordPress
is a semantic personal publishing platform with a focus on aesthetics, web standards, and usability.

Zong
is the only web service that enables you to create and launch mobile services in 10 countries in under 10 minutes and generate revenues from each transaction.

I’ll report back to you on some of these as I check them out.

Cybercast credit: Seesmic

Can TokBox’s video chat be a YouTube-sized business?

This browser-based video chat service allows you to chat either live or record your messages. It is set to take the world by storm, according to the New York Times.


Housed by famed venture firm Sequoia Capital in an old YouTube office, the company also announced today that it had accepted a $4 million funding round from Sequoia, alongside investors including Amidzad and execs from Netscape and Paypal — a slightly larger amount than YouTube’s first funding. Alumni from YouTube, as well as Cisco and Google, are advising the fledgling video startup.

The obvious implication is that TokBox will be heir to YouTube’s good fortune. The simple fact that video is involved doesn’t mean that the two companies are similar, though.

The popularity of online video followed from a market created by movies. The internet’s progress from text, to sound and finally to video mirrors similar institutions from previous years: Newspapers, radio and television.

However, video communication has yet to catch on, outside of business. DimDim (free - see my previous post on my main site) and pay services like WebEx already cater to the videoconferencing market.

Then there is video chat offered by Skype or AIM. You can argue that TokBox, by making itself available in a web browser, is a far more attractive offering than those two services, the requirement for a webcam still makes it more complex.

Despite the inclusion of video cameras into most Apple computers, most people still don’t have their own webcam, yours truly included. As long as this remains the case, recording and sending videos will remain a much smaller market than watching them, me thinks.