
Seesmic’s CEO: We built it, they didn’t come - rokhayakebe
http://digital.venturebeat.com/2009/06/26/video-site-seesmics-ceo-we-built-it-they-didnt-come/
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kyro
This was bound to happen. I've never understood why they continued to raise
money and develop the product. It's as if they didn't understand the way most
people operate and behave. No one wants to watch a 1 minute video of someone
expressing their opinion when I could read the same comment in text in less
than 5 seconds. And I've always gotten the impression that those who do
actually make video comments, who actually position their camera, look into
it, and press record, are those who think their opinion matters a bit more
than the rest. Most of the time, from what I've seen, people try to project
some sort of personality with their comments, which is fine and all, but that
usually, in my opinion, takes away from what they're actually saying. Also,
Loic always tried to pull it off as video for Twitter, which is really flawed.
Twitter's beauty is in the speed of the information stream. I can glance at
tweets tens at a time. You don't get that with video. And I didn't quite
understand their raccoon mascot and what they were trying to pull off.

~~~
brandnewlow
Also, video comments just look terrible. Awful. How am I supposed to take a
video comment seriously when I see some guy in his pajamas with his face
scrunched up into the camera? The experience of watching these videos is
thoroughly unpleasant.

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quilby
Keep in mind that their widget has been on every page on TechCrunch for a long
time (Arrington is an investor).

They really failed :(.

~~~
jimboyoungblood
Many companies succeed despite having no exposure on TechCrunch. This one
failed despite having _permanent_ placement on TC. Makes one wonder what the
true value of TC coverage is, no?

~~~
vaksel
they did manage to raise 12mil for a crappy product with no traction

~~~
SwellJoe
So, if your target audience is investors, TC is probably the best possible
place to be. If you actually want to sell real products, TC is probably not
useful. We've been on TC once (alongside some other YC companies), and
VentureBeat once (dedicated article), both very nice articles, and we were
happy to have the coverage...but our best sales day ever during our first two
years was when someone linked to our site in a _comment_ on Slashdot (we've
since reached a point where we regularly top that, but we still consider it a
really good day when it happens).

I tend to be suspicious of companies _and_ investors that only look to the
various mouthpieces of the valley for their news. There's a whole world of
business happening every day that TC and the other valley rags have no
awareness of. That's OK, of course, as TC has its niche and serves it well.
But, if you're not looking outward, you're missing a lot of opportunities.

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mattmaroon
Please note slide 2 of my presentations:

[http://www.docstoc.com/docs/1857261/Whiner-Jerkins-All-
Hands...](http://www.docstoc.com/docs/1857261/Whiner-Jerkins-All-Hands-101308)

I told you so.

~~~
ivankirigin
But Seesmic isn't dead. They've successfully pivoted, I'd say. They're growing
on top of a hugely successful pair of platforms: facebook & twitter. The money
they've spent in the last 6 months has certainly been better spent than all
the rest, but you have to give them some credit for taking the bold move to
change direction.

~~~
mattmaroon
That's true, though I'd be even less inclined to buy into their company now.

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yan
Is anyone really surprised?

~~~
slpsys
“I think it’s not a technology problem,” he said. “I think it’s a human
problem, that there are very few people like you and me.”

While I can certainly sympathize with someone whose dream goes unfulfilled,
blaming the Internet at large for not 'getting it' rather than acknowledging
you were solving a problem no one apparently had is pretty haughty.

~~~
gruseom
I didn't notice any blaming. I thought he was just saying that the market
wasn't as big as he'd hoped.

Many successful startups originate in founders trying to solve a problem they
themselves had. This may be a case where they did that, but it turned out
there weren't enough other people like them.

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jonknee
I was never even tempted to think it would catch on. Video phones failed to
catch on too--most people don't want to see or be seen when they aren't
physically in the conversation.

~~~
byrneseyeview
There are video phones on a couple million desktops. They usually go by the
name "Macbook".

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msie
Seesmic "failed" because people love to comment anonymously.

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jsz0
I don't really know much (anything) about this service but based on it being
the "twitter of video" I would like to point out that video requires more of
my attention so the content they offer would have to be dramatically better to
interest me. I can read an entire page of my Twitter feed in about 10 seconds
skipping the stuff I don't care about easily. I doubt I can watch 10 seconds
of Seesmic and get any value out of it. Of course the other obvious problem is
you can post video to Twitter by pasting a URL in. Whoever dumped $12M into
this company didn't anticipate users were intelligent enough to use URLs to
point to videos or assumed that _any_ video content automatically appeals to
users more than text. Either way, wrong.

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dannyr
Not surprised.

I don't know why it took them $12M to figure it out though.

~~~
gojomo
It's not clear they've spent the whole $12MM. The submission headline includes
spin not in the source article.

~~~
sho
This is kind of off topic, but why do you write million as "MM"? I've noticed
some people do it; is it a local-convention thing? What does the second M
stand for? To me it means "millimetre" and although I can guess from context,
just curious about it.

update: OK, answered my own question: It comes from Latin "Mille" meaning
"thousand", so MM is a "thousand thousands". Apparently common in finance.
Well, now I know!

~~~
gojomo
You got it. It feels more natural for me to use the financial practice 'MM'
than the scientific/computing 'M' for 'mega' when talking about dollars...
though I'm sure I've sometimes used 'M'.

I suppose the fact that the unit has already been declared as a prefix -- '$'
-- also sways the choice away from SI abbriviations just a little. 'M' for
'mega' is usually a unit prefix. So the usage consistent with MB or Mb or MHz
or MW for dollars might actually be '12M$', which is just weird.

Everyone seems to use '$12K' for thousands, though, because the Roman M would
be too prone to confusion.

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zeedotme
I don't think it's a complete failure yet. I don't think they've spent 12
million yet either. They're adapting and guarantee they'll incorporate video
into their new strategy. Their growth has stuttered sure, but they're clearly
well into their new phase. Best of luck to him & the team...they've got some
heavy competition.

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anigbrowl
What problem was Seesmic purporting to solve that justin.tv, stickam, and
various others weren't?

~~~
bmelton
Twitter succeeded in adoption because it required less time investment than a
proper blog post; Therefore, if we reduce the time investment for video... ???
Profit?

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johnnybgoode
What a waste of money. Not that this is the only example.

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rythie
Poorly edited and lit video with bad content is not better than no video at
all

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staunch
So, are his VCs going to fire him for his honesty?

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zeedotme
its not over till its over :)

~~~
redorb
after 12mm, and 2 years in the industry. Gaining only 250k uniques a month is
a failure; only because im sure all the video cost a lot to put out.

~~~
sho
It's a failure all right. 250k a month is simply terrible. I know people with
personal blogs who do more than that, much more in some cases.

$12m dollars, 0.25m uniques a month, 24 months. Even assuming that they've had
that consistently their whole life, that's 6 million uniques, ever. $2 for
each visit to their site. Time to shut down - way past time, even.

