Video site Seesmic’s CEO: We built it, they didn’t come

seesmic-logo

In the past, Seesmic (sometimes known as “the Twitter of video“) had its share of detractors who wondered whether it could build a business around video conversations and comments. Now it looks like Seesmic founder Loic Le Meur has joined their ranks.

Le Meur’s remarks came in a video conversation thread on the Seesmic site titled, “Seesmic has changed.” Disappointed Seesmic fans said  the San Francisco startup’s focus has drifted away from video, a shift symbolized by moving the video site from www.seesmic.com to video.seesmic.com. Le Meur responded with comments that seemed surprisingly candid in their description of how the company has evolved.

His first comment was brief: “Rest assured, this is really not what I hoped it would become.” Then in a later video, Le Meur elaborated, acknowledging that Seesmic now focuses on a tool that integrates all your social networks — first as a desktop application, and soon as a web-based service at the main Seesmic site. The traffic just hasn’t grown for the video site, Le Meur said, and while video will eventually become part of the Seesmic app, video alone would be “a sure path to failure.”

“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.”

Seesmic has raised a total of $12 million from Omidyar Network, Wellington Partners, and a long list of angel investors.

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About the Author, Anthony Ha

Anthony is VentureBeat's assistant editor, as well as its reporter on enterprise technology, cloud computing, and tech policy. Before joining VentureBeat in 2008, Anthony worked at the Hollister Free Lance, where he won awards from the California Newspaper Publishers Association for breaking news coverage and writing. He attended Stanford University and now lives in San Francisco. Reach him at anthony@venturebeat.com. You can also follow Anthony on Twitter.

  • What's interesting here is hat when Seesmic embarked on this path, I scratched my head as plenty of others (vSocial, Grouper, etc.) had tried video comments without success. The dogs just didn't eat the dog food.

    So at the time I wondered: A) Perhaps they have a different take on how to solve the problem (more functionality, different segment focus, better user experience, distribution deals); and B) Have the VCs looked at the space before writing the check?

    Ultimately, I think the answer is no on both accounts (often, VCs trust that a smart entrepreneur will navigate to the land of goodness if path A isn't the promised land).

    Credit to Loic for reading the tea leaves, being a pragmatist and course correcting. I like their current path a whole lot better. Plenty of dogs and lots of dog food.

    Mark
  • I suspect your comment about the VCs is dead on.
  • Surprising I didnt even know they started with video (name makes a lot more sense now) just thought they had a nice twitter client

    LOL
  • Nice!
  • thanks for the link Anthony!
  • Seesmic video was fairly well-done, and probably could be a sustainable lifestyle business, they just raised too much money with far too much ambition for something that many had tried before, without any substantial difference in approach.
  • KP
    Don't forget that Arrington of Techcrunch is also a investor ... seems like they're gearing more towards building tools related to twitter ... competing with the likes to Tweekdeck.
  • Best of luck with the new direction. The desktop tool is very useful. Great entrepreneurs always find a way to evolve (e.g. PayPal).