December 16th, 2008

Seesmic gets a new set of threads

Posted by Dennis Howlett @ 10:53 pm

Categories: Video

Tags: Seesmic, Flash, Entrepreneurship, Corporate Communications, Advertising & Promotion, Management, Marketing, Dennis Howlett

Seesmic’s black, orange and red colors are now part of the company’s history. As is its attempt to make a full Flash-based interface. As of this morning, the company has launched a re-designed HTML interface that is both cleaner and simpler. Mike Arrington sums it up neatly:

Even though I’m an investor, one thing that has always bugged me about Seesmic is the all black background (its depressing), and the excessive use of Flash on the site (there’s nothing except Flash, try loading it on an iPhone). Having a few Flash elements on a site when necessary is fine. But using it just to use it is so…ugh.

Needless to say, this veiled grumbling following last week’s spat between Arrington and Seesmic founder Loic LeMeur ripples on in the video comments they were bouncing off one another. All good entertainment for those who like to watch Silicon Valley entrepreneurs at play.

On a more serious note, while in Paris last week, Johann Romefort, Seesmic’s CTO told me the new interface was designed to overcome limitations they found in Flash. They were finding it increasingly necessary to make compromises that were hampering the service.

October 11th, 2008

Tim Bray on surviving the tough times

Posted by Dennis Howlett @ 9:14 pm

Categories: Video

Tags: Personal Technology, Tim, Dennis Howlett

Image via WikipediaTim Bray, director of web technologies at Sun Microsystems gave what I believe to be the most practical advice I’ve heard so far for those in startups looking forward. Speaking at FOWA, Tim’s blunt view is that we are headed for tough times but that should not blind people to the downside. Instead he offered positive steps that people can take right now. Among the nuggets he offered (as editorialized):

• Capex style applications and projects are a no=no at a time when cash is king. They simply won’t be funded.
• Consider innovation for regulatory technologies. My colleagues believe we need less rather than more. Tim shares my belief that we will see a slew of new regulation. Therefore, offering technologies that improve transparency will stand a good chance of adoption.
• Build something for yourself. Tim asserts that some of the best technologies are those that were designed to solve a problem that mattered to the individual. That was the genesis of FreeAgent Central (disclosure: I have a small investment in the company.) Time and again I hear that users love the service because it is built for their needs as freelancers.
• The web is heterogeneous so get over whatever your personal technology religion might be. It doesn’t matter and nobody except you cares.
• Contribute to an open source project. OSS are full of holes but if you start to contribute, through bug reports, code or documentation, your reputation will spread. Tim says this is one of the best ways to become known.

The highlights of Tim’s talk (about 13 mins) are here and I have added comments at each of the relevant points so you can concentrate on the things that are important to you.

October 10th, 2008

Seesmic fires a third of staff as recession bites

Posted by Dennis Howlett @ 7:37 pm

Categories: Video

Tags: Recession, Video, Seesmic, Corporate Communications, Marketing, Dennis Howlett

Loic LeMeur, CEO of Seesmic has announced the company is reducing its headcount by seven people. That may not sound like a huge number but as LeMeur says in the video announcement:

…the longevity of the company is obviously of significant importance - and thus we must reduce costs now in order to establish Seesmic as a solid business and pursue success of the company for years to come.

As recently as June, Seesmic raised $6 million in a Series B funding round bringing the total funding to $12 million. Earlier this evening I called LeMeur:

“We’ve cut anything that’s not core to innovation - marketing, international and design. We are getting back to concentrating on developing a video conversation tool. What changed is that revenue will be much tougher to get, especially advertising. We needed to adjust to ensure we don’t need to raise additional funding. We’ve been extremely careful and it is entirely wrong to say we’re running out of money. People will ask why we fired staff. Seesmic need lots of time to develop and in this economic climate that means conserving resources. There was no pressure from investors, in fact I was pro-active and went to them to explain the situation. It was a decision I took based on what I believe is happening in the market. People should expect this to happen but we are now very well positioned to move forward over years to come.”

October 7th, 2008

Seesmic snags Washington Post

Posted by Dennis Howlett @ 8:21 pm

Categories: Video

Tags: Washington Post Co., Seesmic, Corporate Communications, Strategic Planning, Marketing, Strategy, Management, Dennis Howlett

The Washington Post!!! Seesmic powering political debateWe're launching a partnership tonight with The Washington Post! COME JOIN US!! http://blog.washingtonpost.com/thefix/ Seesmic's conversation platform will be embedded at one of their top blogs tonight at 7:30pm Pacific (after the debate).

Just after tonight’s McCain/Obama debate ended I received a Tweet message from Cathy Brooks, head of business development at Seesmic telling me the company has snagged the Washington Post as a customer.

Seesmic has developed a ‘white label’ version of its service for the Washington Post’s political blog, The Fix. By the time this is posted, the site should have gone live. If not then shortly thereafter.

I’ve long held the view that commercial deals of this kind are one of the primary ways for video services like Seesmic to generate revenue so it’s good to see they’ve finally got their ‘enterprisey’ act together with this landmark win. From The Fix:

Thanks to this cool technology, you can offer your very own video comment/rebuttal or go the more traditional route and tell us who you think one in the comments section below.

In other Seesmic news, British actor and comedian John Cleese is now on Seesmic. His posts will amuse all those who are Cleese fans, as will his responses in this medium.

September 24th, 2008

Enterprise CRM "as in real life"

Posted by Zack Whittaker @ 2:18 pm

Categories: Video

Tags: Customer, CRM, HereMe, Advertising & Promotion, Customer Relationship Management (CRM), Enterprise Software, Marketing, Software, Zack Whittaker

Last week I was told of the merging of HearMe, a leading desktop video/audio conferencing suite, and SugarCRM, an open-source CRM platform for improving relationships with customers; obviously really, that’s what CRM does.

Having a platform which allows customers to communicate with the providers of service is a massive improvement to after-sales and pre-sales service. Without these, the customer can feel alienated and without guidance; something an enterprise really wouldn’t want to happen. But by using a CRM solution to indentify customers, acquire customers, but also retain customers is something vital to an enterprise strategy.

CRM is evidentially popular in enterprise and business processes, because it’s a vital way of gaining and retaining customers. Not only that, having an audio and visual solution which complements the CRM literally gives customers a friendly face to be helped, guided and assisted where and when needed.

SugarCRM, even with its inappropriately frivolous name, seems to be unique to some extent by offering this to its customers. By integrating a video conferencing solution with a customer-relationship management solution creates an all-round service which you could only usually get if you acted like a total luddite on the shop floor.

HereMe has essentially taken off the front panel of itself and merged into SugarCRM, like a 30th-century DNA fusion experiment. The customer can now launch a meeting with a sales representative as well as share documents, such as a user manual or product factsheet with the customer.

By enhancing human interaction with voice and speech, text on screen and video, this solution can ease the customer through their purchases by having someone there to reassure them in what they want and need.

August 13th, 2008

Video commenting hitting the information highway

Posted by Zack Whittaker @ 8:12 pm

Categories: Social computing, Video

Tags: Video, Web Site, Bubble, Corporate Communications, Web Site Development, Web Technology, Marketing, Internet, Zack Whittaker

Bubble Comment is exactly that, a way to comment on a website in your own little bubble. It’s hardly new in terms of allowing people to leave comments, but as I’ve previously written, webcams do seem to be the social tool of the modern generation.

This new start up company which created Bubble Comment, privately held by kShermanStudios LLC., have provided services for some big names, including Yahoo! and Verizon. They claim to be “pioneers in video interaction techniques and continually strive to create useful video solutions that help improve the world of web-based communications.”

There have of course been video commenting solutions, start ups, enterprises and dreams, but there hasn’t been one that’s particularly kicked off. The interesting thing about Bubble Comment is you don’t subscribe to the service as a “dedicated service”; it acts independently and remains independent of the websites it supports.

Developers can take a day off if need be, as it relies on the user to open up the Bubble Comment and leave a message. It’s then up to the person leaving a video message to pass on the links to their friends or colleagues. When that person opens that link, they see the website as it was (whether they use any caching, I’m not too clear about), with their recording in a bubble in the top right of the screen.

However, developers can easily share this method of recording comments by adding a small button to the end of each post; easy for those using Wordpress or another blogging platform, which takes them to their destination.

It’s free, easy to use, very user friendly for those not confident with computers, but comments left in the bubble are limited to 90 seconds, and/or 200 playbacks, whichever comes first, and expire and vanish into the ether after 30 days.

One major setback they may have not considered: not everybody has a webcam. Simple as it may seem, many still fear it to be a “security risk”, especially if there are kiddly-winks running around the house. Nevertheless, it’s an interesting service and for a new product, its already got it’s name on many high-ranking websites.

Obviously (the more boring side to this article, yawn) is the business advantages. Clearly stating on the website, this provides a more personalised approach to business sales. Seeing someone describe the product openly and (not often) honestly makes a sales purchase more likely. It could also be a key tool in directing people to a new part of a corporate web page; marketing essentially just got easier.

With this in mind though, neither of these things would work properly on a large scale yet. The restrictions imposed on the video bubble still limits how much it can be viewed. Perhaps this is something short term to help stabilise the service? Get the product working on a small scale as a proof-of-concept and build it up?

Only time will tell. Feel free to use and abuse me like you normally do by using Bubble Comment. If anything, it’ll keep you busy for a good two minutes.

July 21st, 2008

Qik out of private beta

Posted by Dennis Howlett @ 1:49 am

Categories: Video

Tags: Revenue, Advertisement, Business Model, Beta, Qik, Jennifer Leggio, Strategy, Management, Dennis Howlett

Over the weekend, Qik came out of private beta. Jennifer Leggio has all the technical details, along with some insights in Robert Scoble’s outburst about how kyte.tv would kill off Qik and Flixwagon.

One claim the company makes over at VentureBeat is that they have gotten latency down to around 1 second. I’m not so sure. Where I live, the connections can be pretty ropey and delays of up to 2 minutes are not uncommon. I assume they’re talking about optimal conditions.

The other curious part of the story centers around the company’s business model. When I met co-founder Bhaskar Roy earlier in the year, he talked about a commercial business model:

Last month I met with co-founder Bhaskar Roy, who said that Qik has application in emergency services, insurance and healthcare. The company claims to have early contracts with law enforcement but would not be drawn into naming names.

In May, Roy said that the business model comprised:

They are a subscription model, advertising, revenue share with carriers and revenue share with handset makers.

It now seems that is being revised. Jennifer notes that:

Roy maintained that Qik will not move to an ad-based revenue model and will continue to be free for its users, at least for basic capabilities. In the future, Roy says, the service may consider charging for service enhancements or for some commercial services but it wants to remain a transparent service for its users and integration partners.

My guess is that the business models for services of this kind are in a state of flux and that like any other start up faced with a fast moving environment, Roy is adjusting in real time. It seems to me that ad revenues are a non-starter. The format doesn’t suit video. On the other hand I’ve always maintained that business specific charging models make more sense than any other. Unlimited bandwidth plans render deals with carriers dodgy at best and certainly not a long term play. All of which begs the question about how services like Seesmic will monetize.

Bonus link: my recording of Space Shuttle Endeavour’s night time launch.

June 20th, 2008

Seesmic raises another $6 million. Why?

Posted by Dennis Howlett @ 10:00 am

Categories: Video

Tags: Mobile, Money, Seesmic, Advertising & Promotion, Marketing, Dennis Howlett

TechCrunch mentions the fact Seesmic has raised another $6 million. My question is why? In a Skype conversation with Loic LeMeur, Seesmic’s CEO I asked whether the company had burned through the first $6 million. The answer a flat no.

I then recalled a conversation we had a while back where LeMeur had recommended attracting ‘rock star’ investors in the Series A round to attract the really big hitters in later rounds. I asked that if that remained true then why not a Bessemer or Sequoia? His response: “Getting someone like Pierre to help you has nothing to do with money Dennis. I did not need the money, but I really wanted him on board. What he and Eric bring is worth the dilution.”

Asked what the fresh money is for, LeMeur then talked about wanting to become a global brand but also said:

1. increase development on mobile
2. get early internationalization
3. grow our platform already supported by 1500 sites

I commented that mobile has been languishing in recent months. He agreed, saying there will be a new mobile version in the next six weeks. On the international front, Seesmic wants to be truly localized. LeMeur also said that as the company is scaling up, it needs high end hosting of the kind offered by Akamai, hinting at ‘big media deals’ to be announced over the next few weeks.

June 20th, 2008

Seesmic launches threadable embedded player: sparks row

Posted by Dennis Howlett @ 6:25 am

Categories: Video

Tags: Video, Seesmic, Kosso, Phreadz, Corporate Communications, Marketing, Dennis Howlett

Seesmic, the ‘video conversation’ service now includes threaded conversations in its embeddable player. When a person grabs the embed code of a Seesmic video for inclusion on another site, it automatically includes all the ‘replies’ to that video. You see those replies when you mouse over the lower area of the video. The only problem is that this new addition would appear to break its own terms of service. In the interests of caution I am not including a video here but can point readers to Loic LeMeur’s site 

During the video, LeMeur, CEO at Seesmic says: “You can embed the player anywhere you like, on MySpace, Facebook, Facebook?, like anywhere you can put an embeddable player.”

In Seesmic’s terms of service, it says: “You may not download, print, make commercial use of or otherwise use User-Generated Content that you do not own without prior written approval from the owner(s) of the User-Generated Content in question.”

This has sparked a row between LeMeur and Kosso, the inventor of Phreadz. (currently in closed alpha) In direct message Twitter conversations, between the two, LeMeur alleged that Kosso had ’stolen’ his content since he’d not asked LeMeur’s permission to use his image and had downloaded the offending Seesmic video which he then re-uploaded to Phreadz. LeMeur demanded that it be taken down. I found out about it when the row spilled out into the public Twitter timeline.

I contacted LeMeur who said that using his image without permission is something about which he cares. “My content is mine,” he said over a Skype conversation. He also said that while he has no problem with embedding, which keeps the user within the originating site, downloading and then effectively repurposing is something that Seesmic, along with YouTube and others forbid.

This morning (UK time), I contacted Kosso. He is adamant that Phreadz has not stolen anything but has used the Seesmic API to provide an embed of Seesmic videos to the Phreadz site. He added: “We also provide a direct link so that people can punch out directly to the Seesmic site if they so wish. As to the video issue that Loi raised, I deleted the one he is concerned about and all the threads that go with it.” A more detailed explanation is available on this video, shot by Christian Payne this morning and recorded on Qik. (Warning, some of the language is not work safe.)

Regardless of this spat, including replies into the Seesmic embeddable player seems to create a similar problem of potential copyright infringement because of the words: “or otherwise use User-Generated Content that you do not own without prior written approval from the owner(s) of the User-Generated Content in question.”

The row raises a fundamental question about the issue of ’sharing’ in an open API world and ‘ownership’ where third parties are concerned. Kosso says that in the future, users will have the option to restrict re-distribution or offer a Creative Commons license. LeMeur says his company is “working on it.” Over at TechCrunch, Erick Schonfeld picks up the issue albeit from a different angle:

If content was king in old media, conversation is king on the Web. That is why everybody wants to control the conversation. Video commenting startup Seesmic is no exception…

It is a pretty cool feature, but it creates a conflict with all the sites that have embedded Seesmic functionality, such as TechCrunch. We love it when people use Seesmic to comment on posts, and there is certainly something to say for threaded comments. Sometimes you want to respond to comment No. 15, but you are comment No. 74. But if these responses become swallowed within the Seesmic player itself, then it effectively gets taken out of the comment stream of that particular post. (Yes, the responses are still accessible, but people will really have to hunt for them).

Of course, comments have already left the building, so to speak. Many of the most interesting comments about a blog post may occur on Twitter or FriendFeed or some other service. Now Seesmic joins that trend.

Unsurprisingly, LeMeur thinks TechCrunch is wrong.

This kind of problem will not go away any time soon. If anything, the complexity of services now offered would seem to exacerbate a latent issue that will certainly bring problems for enterprises seeking to use these new media. Unlike consumers who blithely give away copyright, enterprise has to consider the risks of taking content. Seesmic doesn’t have a business model but as and when it does, then it will need to think these issues through very carefully. Phreadz on the other hand does have a nascent business model. That’s why they’re looking at the licensing question early in their development.

Most recently I was asked to sign a release form for a video created by SAP’s business process expert community. At the time I didn’t think anything of it. Now I see why.

May 27th, 2008

VITAL Phreadz

Posted by Dennis Howlett @ 1:45 pm

Categories: Video

Tags: Video, Phreadz, Corporate Communications, Marketing, Dennis Howlett

‘Kosso,’ a British programmer with many years moblogging experience has quietly launched Phreadz, a threaded multi-media service that combines the ability to post video, images, text, audio and links, hence the VITAL moniker.

Today Phreadz is in closed, invite only alpha with a small number of users testing the system. From what I’ve seen, it shows genuine promise when compared to similar video services like Seesmic, Ustream.tv or Bloggingheads.tv.

The whacky promo video Kosso produced (at the top) says it all and while he over-eggs current capability - some features like private areas are more placeholder than reality - the conversations stimulated by the service are of exceptional quality and way above the banal.

An interesting thread centered on the business model, always a topic of interest for Web 2.0 businesses starting with an idea and little else. In his video, Kosso mentions channels for brands, something that seems obvious the way the site is designed.  I can see this being offered as a white labeled service alongside public versions used by brands or the Phreadz community. In seeking to find a business model from the get go, Kosso is not boxing himself into the land grab game so many others play. That bodes well for the future, something that was recognized today when Phreadz was awarded the opportunity to present at the upcoming Being Digital conference.

Many of those invited to the alpha test are Seesmic users so they can provide direct feedback on how the site compares (I think the comparisons stop once you get past basic video) and help with suggested enhancements.

What makes Phreadz interesting is that Kosso has managed to assemble a credible service with zero funding, demonstrating once again that today’s technology tools can provide the springboard with which to deliver innovation that has broad appeal.