Seesmic, hyped as the video Twitter, is destined for the deadpool.

Voltaire said the Holy Roman Empire was neither Holy, nor Roman nor an Empire. And Seesmic isn’t Twitter and, in a particular way, it isn’t really video, either.

Seesmic isn’t Twitter because Twitter’s amazing utility is in its instancy. Twitter is fast–faster than email, than SMS, than a quick phone call. At the very moment of an event or news from your friends or anyone else, you are notified with a happy robin twirp (if you, like I, have the good taste to use the Twitterific application). Seesmic’s video certainly ads something–I’ll address that below–but it is not enough value to make up for losing all that speed. You can follow hundreds of Twitter feeds because they are all skimmable, fixed length and (as I say) fast.

Seesmic is chunky and slow.

Ultimately, it is a video bulletin board. A board for a species that learned to talk and then learned to really love talking, and they invented mirrors, too, and invited them into the ménage a trois. Seesmic is twenty-odd royal portrait painters and a few court stenographers at the imperial command of Seesmic user jaimiecroft discussing today’s top post: What do you do? Five thousand years of civilization and we learn that if he is not sleeping or working, his favourite thing to do is collect baseball cards. Then he shows us some cards. I’m riveted.

And you have to watch it all, because there is no ability to zip through what people are saying. They could allow for a fast-forward that kept voice at the same pitch with a close-caption. Like the ticker-taped Breaking News segment on Wonder Showzen! (timecode 02:14) Or if they wanted to be at all like Twitter, they could impose a limit. Ten seconds and then shut up. In ten seconds you could Seesmic-Tweet a haiku, our understanding of the relationship between Tom and Katie, or the person who is your everything. Or the founding so-called principles of the United States, or even the free health care/expensive data plans version that we Canadians roll with. Or a fart joke. Whatever: ten seconds then CUT! Word invention: a smoosh, ie the perfect ten-second Seesmic post.

Seesmic just opened for public use but I’ve been beta testing it for a while. It is awful. Sinister pony-tail men with lathered European accents dissecting the deep meaning of their abdomen tattoos. Faded grey people mumbling about something less interesting than the Wal-Mart family portraits on the wall behind them.

I ask myself, do I really want to see bloggers?

Even those with something to say might be better heard than seen. I cherish listening to Howard Stern on Sirius radio, but I never want to watch his gaunt Joey-Ramone face. The time and effort and aesthetics of video production that hold our cultural currency make these home-videos torture to watch. If you use YouTube to search for unwatched videos that are panned as boring then Seesmic is for you.

Seesmic is not video in the way we ever want video to be. Consider a technology or technique that makes the job harder or more annoying. It doesn’t exist for long. And in the purgatory meantime, we shout, that’s not a car! Do you call that a dishwasher? Etc.

I do believe, as with Twitter, that in addition to the fart jokes and Celtic tattoos and ponytails, humans will invent increasingly satisfying ways to use video online. And not just in the porn sense. It just won’t be the current Seesmic way.

Seesmic does offer one flash of accidental greatness: the founder’s hilarious blog. Mr. Loic Le Meur reveals to all us wannabe web start-upers the successful formula for getting a Web 3.0 up and running. (The Internet is also about sharing information; thanks for helping the little guy!)

So what’s the secret?

Niklas Zennstrom and Janus Friis (of Skype) gave him his seed money of nearly six million dollars. They are his friends. As are all the rich gatekeepers of online innovation.

So once you have amazingly rich and well-connected friends, just copy a useful superstar like Twitter, then take an inevitable variant, like video, and mix.

Presto: six million in your pocket.

What, as Oprah says, a lightbulb moment. So much for my idea about Twitter TV. The only gatekeepers I know work the doors at The Falcon Club.

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Posted on Thursday, February 21st, 2008 at 10:09 am. Follow comments through the RSS 2.0 feed. Comment or trackback.