Seesmic Blog

Another, “Seesmic according to Jeremy Vaught,” post. I know you love ‘em.

Here is the genesis of this post. Because I still use my digital camera to take my videos for Seesmic, I have to get creative in how I get the videos into Seesmic. I can’t upload directly, so I use YouTube. What I get out of this is a hit counter. I like knowing how many people see my videos. Now clearly, I can’t tell if they are seen on YouTube or Seesmic, but that number is better then nothing, which is what Seesmic gives me.

Again, I realize Seesmic is still in development, and I don’t expect this right away, but while in the planning stages, I would like Johann to think on what I’m about to say. Because while I want a hit counter, ultimately I want more then that. What do I want? Well, everything really. And this could mean two things, ‘everything’ needs to be built into the Seesmic UI, or it needs to be available in the API and someone else can write it.

Ok, enough messing around Jeremy, what is this ‘everything’ of which you speak? Well, it’s everything. So think of everything in the context of a counter for your Seesmic videos. When you have thought of your ‘everything’, continue and I’ll give you an idea of my ‘everything’.

You are ready now?… good! Here is my everything. I’m sure you just thought of these things as well, but I would like to see a full analytics of people watching my videos. I would also like to see a fully analytics of how everyone as a whole watches videos. I don’t want this to be a popularity contest, but I want to know the numbers. I want to know how many people click on my video, but then don’t watch it. I want to know how long they watch it. To the end? Stop after 30 seconds? This is valuable information. Also, how are they watching? On a standalone player? In Seesmic, in my their friends tab, in the public timeline, in an embedded player and from what site?

If you don’t want to provide all this data yourself, Seesmic. Please put it into an API, so I can extract it, or a 3rd party site can extract it and supply me with that data.

All of the sudden I feel like the voice of doom, the negative Nancy. I’m just pointing out everything that is wrong. So let me backtrack a bit, and pick a little salt back out of those wounds.

First. I only say these things because I am enjoying Seesmic, and I want it to get better. (which as I have mentioned before, is why you need to hire me and we can speed this right along. If I were working for you helping to fix this stuff, I would have less time to blog about the problems I’m experiencing. Wait, that sounded like a threat So along that line of thought, let me tell you what I like about Seesmic.

Community: It’s all about community no matter what. This is why Twitter is so successful, even in it’s simplicity. This is why myspace is so successful, even though it looks like a Web 1.0 application. And why Facebook is uber successful. If it bring people together, and doesn’t have major bugs, nobody cares how it looks, just so long as the community is there, and it works. (which go together, if it didn’t work, the community would move on)

On a sub point, I see community as happening in two different ways. 1. The community comes already together. This is largely Seesmic right now. We each have enough connections to others in Social Media, that we know others on Seesmic, and those we know, know others, and so on and so on. You drop someone in the middle of this, they are just going to be lost if they don’t make friends quickly. This is one of the primary problems with Second Life. It is so big, and has a such a large learning curve, that if you stick around long enough to figure stuff out, you may just find a community, otherwise, you fall away. 2. You come alone, and find community. I would say everyone on Seesmic right now is very Social Media/New Media savvy. This is a commonality we all begin with. We all talk to each other and can talk about myspace/facebook/twitter/utterz/seesmic/youtube/google talk/talkshoe/podcasting/blogging/viddler/vimeo/iJustine and on and on. There is talk of a running club in Seesmic. This is fantastic, but right now the technology does not support this. I’m sure it is coming. Seesmic also needs location based grouping for the same purpose.

Ok… so this is horrible blogging technique. But as I sought out what comes after community, I realize it is all about community. The beginning and the end. Alpha and Omega as they say. Début et la fin, l’alpha et l’oméga. And the technology is merely there to facilitate community.

This post is getting long, so I’ll talk about what technology I like in a separate post.