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Paul Bradshaw, via seesmic.com
Paul Bradshaw posted a video asking how journos could use Seesmic. (Click to watch the video and view responses.) |
I've been playing with
Seesmic once again. (It's a conversational video-sharing service, somewhat like Twitter meets YouTube.) I briefly dabbled with an alpha invitation to Seesmic a few months ago and stupidly wrote it off as a vague video blogging platform.
It isn't. Seesmic is social. And I think that's very important.
Seesmic is, for me, a symptom of how media is changing. It is a symptom of how video has become as inexpensive and disposable as e-mail. It is a symptom of a generation of people who are completely comfortable with visual media, and how they are rewriting that grammar.
It is also a new and important part of the personal distributed media ecosystem that we are gathering around us. This stretches from a person's Facebook profile to their Twitter account, their blog, and Flickr and YouTube accounts. Just as not everyone is on Flickr, not everyone will end up on Seesmic -- but many will, and you'll need to know how to talk to them.
Don't mistake Seesmic for another YouTube. Seesmic is to YouTube what Twitter is to blogging. Key to this is the fact that Seesmic works with your Twitter account -- so that new Seesmic posts are cross-posted on Twitter, and video replies are even cross-posted @ the other person's name (allowing you to discover them on Twitter). I wouldn't be surprised to see it integrated with other social media platforms in the future.
Similarly, as U.K. journalist Alison Gow points out, Seesmic allows for a better interview experience than text-based communications. She uses the analogy of how face-to-face interviews are always better than telephone interviews. It's a great point. Gow also suggests that Seesmic might work well for debates and conversation alongside news articles and issues.
The great thing about Seesmic is the way it breaks down barriers: People seem more comfortable and confident, somehow, with sending a stranger a video reply based on a video post than they would sending an @reply in Twitter. I would argue this is because of the implicit intimacy of online video.
Related to that, Seesmic is an expression of the intimate, personal nature of online video -- which is a world apart from the impersonal, broadcast nature of television. If you're involved in communicating the news in any way, I recommend learning the language of online video. Seesmic provides a perfect space to do so.
It's for all these reasons that journalists should try Seesmic. But this recommendation comes with some caveats:
- Still in the early-adopter phase. For this reason it is good for social networking if you're in the technology field -- but not yet great if you want opinions or feedback from anyone else. So don't expect amazing results, and I wouldn't recommend spending huge amounts of time on it yet. However, the user base will change. Getting on Seesmic now will make a difference as it grows. Just ask people who've been blogging or Twittering for a while.
- Search is lacking. Since Seesmic is video-based, as a whole it's not very searchable or search-engine-friendly. (It also poses accessibility issues.) Seesmic's search function for finding other Seesmic users is pretty poor: So far, it only searches usernames, not profiles. (I'm onlinejournalist, on Seesmic. I'm telling you that because you won't find me if you search there for "Paul Bradshaw," even though my profile includes my name.) As with Twitter, third-party tools can help somewhat. Phil Campbell created a Seesmic search service that searches Seesmic post titles and authors. But video search is improving all the time, so again expect this to change.
- Doesn't play nice with other services. Seesmic currently lacks the sort of support enjoyed by bigger players such as YouTube. Therefore, Wordpress.com-hosted blogs currently can easily embed YouTube videos -- but most Wordpress.com bloggers cannot yet easily embed Seesmic videos. (There is, however, a Seesmic plugin for self-hosted Wordpress.org blogs.) That's why I recorded my video blog about Seesmic on... YouTube. Ouch.
- No video backup. Your video posts are normally recorded straight to Seesmic. Therefore, you have no local backup copy and no way of getting one unless you use an FLV converter.
- Needs stats. So far, Seesmic doesn't appear to tell you how many views you've had. That isn't great for persuading people that this is a valuable way of, for example, distributing news. Also, it doesn't allow responses from non-users of Seesmic, which limits its interaction potential. (Through Seesmic's connection with Twitter, you could "tweet" the person to respond to a video post, but that's not intuitive.)
- What's public? It's worth noting the usual blurring of public-private boundaries that exists on all social media services, including Seesmic. Journalists using material from Seesmic should bear in mind the lessons of Virginia Tech, etc. Just because it's public doesn't mean it's yours.
These are still early days, though. Crunchbase's entry on Seesmic promises: "In the future, Seesmic users will be able to record Skype conversations, video and chat. Seesmic will incorporate RSS feeds for individual users similar to Facebook's newsfeed. Finally, [founder] Lemur sees Seesmic as potentially becoming a kind of crowdsourced online TV, with the most popular producers receiving revenue share."
What do you think? Do you see other potential? Have you found Seesmic useful? Please comment below, or post a video response.
