[Loic Le Meur, Seesmic Founder. Photo by Shel]
[NOTE: This is the last notebook entry for Chapter 9. This chapter will also include Stocktwits, Ron's Hardware, The Coffee Groundz, CrowdSPRING, and Gourmet Gastronomer. The notes are not the actual text, which has much more of my own commentary and less of the content that you see on this blog, which really is being used as an author's notebook. Any feedback I receive here is likely to impact the Twitterville book text which will be significantly different from what you see in the notebook. For example, I'd love to hear a good personal anecdote that involves a Seesmic video conversation.]
Like Stocktwits, which I discussed yesterday, Seesmic is another company that probably would not exist if it were not for Twitter. In fact, Loic Le Meur, the charismatic serial entrepreneur who moved from Paris to San Francisco to start Seesmic, describes his fast-growing service as "Twitter for video."
Twitter lets you very easily upload a five minute-or-shorter video clip to the company web site with extraordinary ease. It is designed to be more conversational than other video platforms, letting people respond by video or text. By September 2009, when Twitterville comes out, Seesmic will have well over one million downloads and has both finances and momentum to carry it through to better times.
Le Meur, founder and impresario of the LesWebs series of conferences, the most popular social media gathering in Europe, has started four previous companies, three of them quite successful. He brought a strong personal network with him to Seesmic and that gave him a special asset when he decided to launch Seesmic entirely through Twitter. Shortly after enrolling in Twitter, he bacame one of the 100 most followed people on the service.
He used his position to get feedback and of course to generate word of mouth enthusiasm for his new company. But he also used Twittterville as a testing lab. Before the technology was fully ready for public poking and prodding he asked on Twitter for a few hundred volunteers to test an early "alpha version" and ended up with thousands of Twitter users volunteering.
"We warned them it would be buggy and they started helping us with constant feedback. Our friends also started talking about it in public on Twitter creating a demand for invites. Buzz started to grow way ahead of any of our plans or expectations," he told me. In the end, Seesmic had one of the largest--and noisiest--alpha testing periods in history.
The impact was that Le Meur took a personal network and converted it into a Twitterville Global Neighborhood that served as a passionate Seesmic community which has continued to grow. acquired
In April, 2008, Seesmic acquired Twhirl, a desktop Twitter adjunct that made it easier to integrate Seesmic content with Twitter in terms of uploads and sharing. According to Le Meur, the strategy was to provide a unified approach to Twitter and Seesmic in terms of video sharing.
Le Meur, remains Seesmic's best demonstrator. He recently video interviewed former UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan at the World Economic Forum. People from all over the world then joined in on Seesmic chat to ask questions. "This is how people can add video to a Twitter kind of conversation," he told me.
Like just about everyone, I've spoken to, Le Meur says his company has gained more on Twitter by listening than talking. But he added a point. " Giving credit and thanking Twitter users for their feedback is very key. I see many brands who only broadcast failing. They try to use Twitter as traditional media and it simply does not work. Twitter helps you create a community of users around your brand or yourself, a Tribe as Seth Godin would say."
Your community does not want to be lectured, it wants conversation.
Seesmic is still in a pre-revenue phase of its development, following the same strategy as Twitter and a dacde earlier Google. Le Meur promises that Seesmic will "always have a free version." But it sees a professional version in its future, one with greater functionality.
"We also see some corporate and academic use which will be easy to monetize," he said. Like Twitter, who is currently edging steadily toward some charges to corporate users, Le Meur eschews advertising "a good option short term given how it suffers these days and the volume we would need to get enough revenue."
[NOTE: This is the last notebook entry for Chapter 9. This chapter will also include Stocktwits, Ron's Hardware, The Coffee Groundz, CrowdSPRING, and Gourmet Gastronomer. The notes are not the actual text, which has much more of my own commentary and less of the content that you see on this blog, which really is being used as an author's notebook. Any feedback I receive here is likely to impact the Twitterville book text which will be significantly different from what you see in the notebook. For example, I'd love to hear a good personal anecdote that involves a Seesmic video conversation.]
Like Stocktwits, which I discussed yesterday, Seesmic is another company that probably would not exist if it were not for Twitter. In fact, Loic Le Meur, the charismatic serial entrepreneur who moved from Paris to San Francisco to start Seesmic, describes his fast-growing service as "Twitter for video."
Twitter lets you very easily upload a five minute-or-shorter video clip to the company web site with extraordinary ease. It is designed to be more conversational than other video platforms, letting people respond by video or text. By September 2009, when Twitterville comes out, Seesmic will have well over one million downloads and has both finances and momentum to carry it through to better times.
Le Meur, founder and impresario of the LesWebs series of conferences, the most popular social media gathering in Europe, has started four previous companies, three of them quite successful. He brought a strong personal network with him to Seesmic and that gave him a special asset when he decided to launch Seesmic entirely through Twitter. Shortly after enrolling in Twitter, he bacame one of the 100 most followed people on the service.
He used his position to get feedback and of course to generate word of mouth enthusiasm for his new company. But he also used Twittterville as a testing lab. Before the technology was fully ready for public poking and prodding he asked on Twitter for a few hundred volunteers to test an early "alpha version" and ended up with thousands of Twitter users volunteering.
"We warned them it would be buggy and they started helping us with constant feedback. Our friends also started talking about it in public on Twitter creating a demand for invites. Buzz started to grow way ahead of any of our plans or expectations," he told me. In the end, Seesmic had one of the largest--and noisiest--alpha testing periods in history.
The impact was that Le Meur took a personal network and converted it into a Twitterville Global Neighborhood that served as a passionate Seesmic community which has continued to grow. acquired
In April, 2008, Seesmic acquired Twhirl, a desktop Twitter adjunct that made it easier to integrate Seesmic content with Twitter in terms of uploads and sharing. According to Le Meur, the strategy was to provide a unified approach to Twitter and Seesmic in terms of video sharing.
Le Meur, remains Seesmic's best demonstrator. He recently video interviewed former UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan at the World Economic Forum. People from all over the world then joined in on Seesmic chat to ask questions. "This is how people can add video to a Twitter kind of conversation," he told me.
Like just about everyone, I've spoken to, Le Meur says his company has gained more on Twitter by listening than talking. But he added a point. " Giving credit and thanking Twitter users for their feedback is very key. I see many brands who only broadcast failing. They try to use Twitter as traditional media and it simply does not work. Twitter helps you create a community of users around your brand or yourself, a Tribe as Seth Godin would say."
Your community does not want to be lectured, it wants conversation.
Seesmic is still in a pre-revenue phase of its development, following the same strategy as Twitter and a dacde earlier Google. Le Meur promises that Seesmic will "always have a free version." But it sees a professional version in its future, one with greater functionality.
"We also see some corporate and academic use which will be easy to monetize," he said. Like Twitter, who is currently edging steadily toward some charges to corporate users, Le Meur eschews advertising "a good option short term given how it suffers these days and the volume we would need to get enough revenue."
