Popular Twitter and Facebook app Seesmic Desktop has today been upgraded with a number of new features and a new community website has been launched.. However, support for Seesmic’s bread-and-butter product, video discussion, is still curiously missing. It’s leading us to wonder if the team at Seesmic have any future at all planned for their video platform.
New features for version 0.3 RC1 (it’s no longer tagged as a ‘Preview Release’) include the ability to crosspost to multiple Twitter accounts simultaneously, with an option to allow the app to automatically switch between accounts depending on whom you are replying to.
URL shortening service Bit.ly is now more tightly integrated with Seesmic Desktop. Support for their API means you can track the number of clickthroughs from Bit.ly URLs generated within the app. Support for services like Posterous and Twitpic can now be set on an account-by-account basis.
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Also launched today, Team Seesmic is a new community site, allowing fans of the app to keep in touch with developers. Seesmic founder Loic Le Meur has suggested in a launch video today that new features may come to members of the community first. Membership of Team Seesmic is currently by moderator approval only, so you may have to wait a while to get access.
While all this is good stuff for users, the question remains, where is the video? The app’s website promises that video is “coming soon” but while they delay they’re missing a trick. Competing apps like Tweetdeck and Tweetie already have video support, allowing users to record a video and then tweet a link to it. Seesmic Desktop is a popular app and supporting Seesmic’s own video discussion platform would seem a logical step to promote its use.
Judging by Alexa.com figures, it certainly needs help. After a spike in April, Seesmic use has been going nowhere. While Quantcast figures (labelled as a rough estimate) show a large spike in traffic during mid-May, that traffic is back on the decline too.
Of course, Seesmic Desktop is still in its early development stages and video support may well come with time. It could well be though, that with Tweetdeck developer Iain Dodsworth planning to charge for adding services Loic believes his Desktop app is the real moneyspinner after all.
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