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Seesmic changes direction and Loic Le Meur gives a brutally honest assessment (video)

By Zee
June 26, 2009
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Picture 17Seesmic begun its life as a “Twitter for video”, from French/SF Entrepreneur Loic Le Meur. The site received wide acclaim , great press and decent growth during the first year of its life. Recently however the growth has stuttered and no one has recognized this more so that Le Meur himself.

Visiting Seesmic now, you’ll notice a startling difference to the sites focus. Video is almost a difficult area of the site to find, with priority being given to the new Seesmic Desktop, a social aggregation application that currently integrates Twitter and Facebook.

We ourselves wondered what direction Le Meur was taking the company upon release of the latest version of Seesmic Desktop because as wonderful as it is, it had zero video – something we obviously expected it would come from a video startup.

Today, with the re-launch of Seesmic.com, we are finally given answers. This is a must watch video for Seesmic fans, techies and web entrepreneurs the world over – it’s an honest and frank explanation of why Le Meur has decided to make the change, and credit to him for being so direct.


  • This is weird... the video won't play in Firefox :(
  • The flash loads with the Seesmic logo in a gray box with bar below it.... Looks to me like a preloader for the video but the watchable video never loads.
  • DanSimerman
    I could see the reason for the push for an integrated Twitter/Facebook desktop client. Haven't a couple startups tried ths already recently? Because the first to pull off this service successfully should be able to dominate the desktop market client...for a little while.
  • I applaud Loic's message (sincerity, accent and all). There is a danger for all visionaries to become so enamored of their own ideas that they cannot distance themselves enough to make tough business decisions. Loic is proof that sometimes a good idea will not carry a business, and you have to be willing to change direction. It also saddens me on another level that we live in a space where innovation must produce instant results or die, we complain about big box retail and me-too products but when something distinct comes along we snuff it out.
  • totally agree ! start-ups need to be able to change focus quickly. muddle through till it works. Vinod Khosla agrees :) http://vator.tv/news/show/2009-06-26-vinod-khos...
  • I'm glad Loic recognized this obvious fact. People don't want to be on TV. Most people are shy. The few extroverted tekkies who think this video commenting stuff is wonderful are a tiny slice of the pie. So it's not a growth industry. He got what he got -- it's plateau'd now.

    It is in part a tech thing but not as he thinks. Not everyone wants to go out and buy a web cam and mess with making videos and then uploading it. Too many steps. I'd rather leave a text comment on a blog or frankly just go into Second Life where an avatar is easier to use, dress, have create stuff, etc. you can't do on a video.

    Seems like tools for Twitter are a more sellable product.

    Sean Percival is ridiculous for telling people not to pay attention to funding -- so typical of the entitlement-happy generation. Loic himself says very acutely that he *has* to think of that funding and the growth and viability of the company.

    What you do realize about these "social media communities" however is that they are totally fake -- they aren't communities but serfs. They have absolutely no democratic governance whatsoever. The sole proprietor or company owning the servers with their data can take them up or down at any time for any reason or no reason. There isn't even the courtesy to notify people in a timely fashion -- but that's because no one has any rights or participation in the governance of the company so it never even occurs to devs to bring users on board.

    Social media is a new kind of software, socialware, not software and people making it need to be more cognizant of the users. The users might not identify what is profitable for the company, but if they have ways of sustaining some aspect of the business themselves -- which after all, they do, with their FREE content! -- then they should be involved in decisions.

    Americans are such Yahoos, complaining about people's accents.
  • thanks Zee.
  • Loic, I agree and disagree with your accessment of the stagnant growth of video converstation. While I agree that there are not very many poeple who want to participate in video converstation, the deeper problem is one of search. You cannot search the conversation itself. It is near impossible to pinpoint specific "moments of content" Until video audio to text transcription becomes much more effective and can be applied to video search, video conversations services will be no more than novelty.

    Loic, I also fear that a twitter client may also be a very risky proposition. As Steve Rubel pointed out at the 140 Characters Conference in NYC, Twitter may be peaking now! While short one to many communications are here to stay, Twitter may not be here in a few years. Best of luck to you and Seesmic and thanks for the authentic and honest communications.
  • always good to hear sincerity, especially in business.

    i can't believe some are talking about accent. who gives a damn?
  • Exactly! Who gives a damn about the accent?? You need to NOT have an accent to succed in this country? I don't think so!
    Many others find the accent charming (and I bet Loic gets lots of compliments from women ;) - good for him)...
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