Seesmic‘s Loic Le Meur has just announced a brand new update to the Seesmic platform and excitingly, it’s available for public testing here. Le Meur iterates and re-iterates that the new site is experimental, not without glitches and available specifically for user feedback (so ensure you give it!).
The reason for the major update? Well according to Le Meur, to ensure future features/updates are added faster, smoother and easier.
Updates
On his blog, the Seesmic founder shared a list of updates:
- no more huge flash except in the player. We heard you, it was the #1 request of the community. The new Seesmic should be light, fast to load and easy to access.
- white and not black. Colors are always a debate but a majority of members wanted white. White is good for seesmic-ing as it lights your face in the dark
- auto-refreshing timeline, no need to reload anything
- videos now play in the thumbnails themselves so that you can watch them without having to leave the timeline
- user and video search (plus you can bookmark your searches)
- new user profile pages try any seesmic.com/username
- type a friends name as a recipient for a video
- multiple privacy posting options (public, hide from public timeline, private)
- RSS and Atom feeds for public and user timelines, with enclosures
- Cooliris view (top corner button). We’re very excited to announce our partnership with Cooliris (thanks Tiil for the idea). Now you can have the full Seesmic experience in the impressive 3D Piclens interface, and even reply to videos from there. Seesmic videos will also be easy to find from Cooliris for their current users.
The few features from the old Seesmic which have yet to be ported over (although will be) include:
- posting youtube videos
- language filters
- upload a video
Impressions
I must make clear, I am not a regular Seemic user so my thoughts/views are solely from an infrequent visitors perspective.
First impressions however are delightful! No more full flash site, which has increased loading times dramatically (at least for me). The switch from black to white is a bold move and undoubtedly a positive change from the previous “dark/underground nightclub” look. Being able to watch videos in thumbnail view is a very welcome feature and the user profile pages are wonderfully clean – as they should be. Above all, the site has improved dramatically from a usability perspective, the app has a far more familiar feel and a distinct yet instinctive navigation.
Video describing the update can be found here:
Try the new Seesmic here.
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