January 29th, 2008
Seesmic's next steps
Seesmic, the closed beta ‘video conversation ‘ platform that is uploading more than 4,000 videos per day today announced at Demo 2008 a series of enhancements that will see the service emerge from being an interesting social media experiment to a service that might capture the interest of major brands.
Released today is the much needed conversation threading where users can see replies behind any story. Additional language support has also been added.
Coming in the next few weeks will be the ability to receive videos from the public timeline, replies or your Seesmic friends onto mobile phones. Users will also be able to upload videos and post replies. Today, users can post videos from 300+ supported mobile phones via Shozu or Qik but users cannot download to those devices.
Early adopters have been busy creating additional tools like Kosso’s search that take advantage of Seesmic’s API. According to Loic LeMeur, CEO of Seesmic: “Developers who ask are being given access to all Seesmic video data, replies, social software and recorder data.”
Although Seesmic has been received as a consumer platform, the company has received interest from large brands including L’Oreal. “We met with ten product managers in New York who are talking about developing communities that will focus on receiving sample feedback and offering makeup demonstrations and classes using Seesmic,” says LeMeur. 
As to the future, LeMeur added : “There are many enhancements in the pipeline the most important of which I think will be the ability to create groups. In February, we expect to launch shows done by the community, a kind of international CNN for my friends.” Also coming are two desktop clients that will be similar to those offered by Twitter developers.
While Seesmic has a strong presence in the market, Microsoft is understood to be developing something similar integrated into its Sharepoint platform. Chris Dalby, an independent Microsoft developer said in a Seesmic (sic) video: “Microsoft know about the business application potential and have been developing a system called Academy Mobile. Microsoft launched it internally about eight months ago. Their internal sales teams use it.”
Update: Chris Dalby is developing a Seesmic .NET class for asp.net Ajax developers called Time Drain. It is designed to help .NET developers integrate Seesmic into their web applications.
Dennis Howlett has been providing comment and analysis on enterprise software since 1991. See his full profile and disclosure of his industry affiliations.
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