One of the hardest to get beta accounts right now is Seesmic, Loic Le Meur’s new startup that went into private beta in early October.
The service, which can most easily be described as a video Twitter, is popular with the 300 people who are beta testing it so far. Le Meur says that more than half of them are extremely active, and 200 videos are being posted daily.
There are over 5,000 people on the beta invite wait list. But if you’ve gotten to this post quickly enough, you can get in immediately. The first 100 people to send an email to techcrunch@seesmic.com will be given beta accounts. Everyone after the first 100 will be added to the beta list.
At some point, Le Meur says, existing beta holders will be able to invite others to join as well. As soon as that functionality goes live we’ll add Seesmic to InviteShare.
Disclosure: I have also become an investor in Seesmic and have updated my disclosures on our about page.
Video twitter sounds awesome. Being able to test it sounds even better.
I’d love to get in.
Thanks, Michael and Loic, for this action.
Ive not heard of this service until now and it sounds like a very useful or timewasting service. I never really got into twitter although jaiku did grab me and i still use it frequently, so maybe a video based twitter service could prove very useful especially for comunicating with work collegues and using it for GTD purposes.
Looks great!
Sounds very interesting. Another addiction to add to twitter.
Hoping my pleas for a Seesmic invite will be heard thru the cosmos. How many more Tweets about wanting my Seesmic before the Seesmic gods send that coveted invite. Ready for another addiction.
I think it will be a huge time waster, yes it will be cool but I’m not going to use it as it will suck a lot of Internet bandwidth and it will be completely distractive. It will target the younger generations whereas Twitter can target everyone else.
I sent an email about 7 minutes after the post, and I’m not sure if I’ll get one. That means two things
1) Seesmic has NAILED invite buzz
2) I’m addicted to Techcrunch
Very cool. I tried, see if I made the first 100.
Rex
this is sooo coool
I wonder if Michael could post a list of companies he **hasn’t** invested in.
Whoops, thought I got in within 20 minutes, but no.. it’s 40, so no chance
I’ll post again if I do get in tough 
I’m proud to be using and testing Seesmic. It is a genuinely engaging tool for real-time 3D community interaction or, as Loic describes, creating “conversation in video.”
@Dallas- I’m seeing a pretty equal mix of people using the site. Loic’s done such an awesome job connecting with our Twitter community, I see that most of the people using Seesmic right now are really active Twitterers.
As a tester, I can say it’s fun for a bit. But they have along way to go to add the features many of us expect from a service like this. I’m looking forward to seeing how it develops.
The tech behind it is not new, as you’ve been able able to set up a service like this for years using Flash Communication Server (now called Flash Media Server) – the one thing holding back people from creating potentially popular systems like this had always been the cost of the FMS servers and bandwidth. These days, things are cheaper. And if you’re Loic, I expect you have a bob or two to be able to throw at this.
If they get the right people advising them what to build – and how – and naturally the right people building it, it will be an interesting system. Especially if they expose more data and provide an API to build even more interesting stuff on top of it.
It’s fun for now.
Good luck with the investment Mike! If you need more ideas, you know where I am
> Kosso: “Especially if they expose more data and provide an API to build even more interesting stuff on top of it.” You’re right. Coming sooooo.
Vinvin (seesmic)
In my opinion, Seesmic appears to be full of PR fluff w/no real business plan, revenue model or substance.
Honestly, I expected more from Loic.
I dunno if I want to see the fugly people on the other end of the Internet.
Brilliant business plan, otherwise. All my friends and I always spend hours on complete and utter time-wasters.
And think of the mad ad revenue they’ll bring in. Wow! Zillions of page views, what with flipping from video to video. And, it will definately attract the high-spending, high-dollar income users. Each and every Semenmic user!
Wish I could get in NOW!
Is this post a sponsored pay-per-post item? I didn’t know Arrington was a postie
Looks interesting but I don’t know if I have that much time to waste not reading TechCrunch.
So I signed up, but I need to say out front that if I don’t get in I will have to become a real troll on this site (instead of, say, sort of a troll).
See utterz.com
ha, digital twitter, expose digital divide, here in india a can’t even watch youtube videos, the connection is so slow…. and you guys are doing video twitters? left behind once again, of course when the sunspots strike… we will be even
loic le meur has been very savvy in how he’s marketed this site, yes. but seesmic is engaging…a site of users posting content on idea and issue discuss, vittering daily activities, random monologues, reading excerpts of poetry, silliness… it is brill, too addictive and very entertaining.
video chat? yahoo and anywebcam had that five years ago
really, isn’t this just video chat?
its really cool!
Disclosure: I have also become an investor in Seesmic and have updated my disclosures on our about page.
Total bull shit mike…stop with the PR crap.
best,
Carl
Would love to give it a try.
God….these beta schemes are getting out of hand. What is such a bid deal about this. This is nothing than a PR plug for these guys. Just to show TC has no journalistic integrity.
Mike if you want to promote this on YOUR site that’s fine. But you can use a banner ad spot and not run a infomercial like this.
“is popular with the 300 people who are beta testing it so far”
Is this something to be proud of when you’re still in private beta? I mean, I really don’t get it… This “fame” is due to the yet unknown product or to its initiator’s one?
deadpool fodder.
If this were you or me i do’nt think we would be getting this much attention to a pretty ordinary site,it’s not all of this and that,it’s not even innovative it’s just plain old and quite rightly so it’s old technology put together because it’s now affordable.
To many people have a sheepish mentality and go with the crowd!!!
And Mike Arrington are you English ???
me too.. me too..
we sent an email
so pls give it to us..
pls pls
agree with 30 deadpool fodder!!
Congratulations man,
Keep moving the Money.
http://tekno-wo...ld.blogspot.com
I’m not sure I get it. The screenshot you posted makes it seem like the public list of video twitters have titles: Transformers, deviantART…, Plain White T’s, techcrunch test, Guy Jumping off Building, test2…. Doesn’t sound like a “Video Twitter” to me, unless the public vitters are just mini-ads.
Maybe that’s not the focus, though, and it’s more about the social graph. I could see real addictive value in sharing video updates between closed groups of friends.
Couldn’t this similarly be a feature on Facebook?
Dan
I actually think you should disclose that you are friends with a startups founders, vcs and or angels.
This looks good but I think youTube could pull a google calender and kill this.
@9
every company is ‘cool’, till you see it go belly up
Hope I get to try this count me in .
I want to try Seesmic.. please
Seesmic? San Andreas Pool
“Disclosure: I have also become an investor in Seesmic and have updated my disclosures on our about page.”
Invest in our search engine. At least send us a pricey Sun SAN we could never afford. You know you want you. Right now we don’t even have disk duplication.
This guy’s from Europe Arrington, we’re your peoples.
Hmm. I remember the days when investors would not touch any such app until they had about 1 million user in beta.
“Hmm. I remember the days when investors would not touch any such app until they had about 1 million user in beta.”
That’s still the case. This guy Loic is VIP. They flew him over, set him up in the valley, and now they’re finishing off the mile with the press. Like the fresh mint you get at the end of an all you can eat buffet.
I would not include this case in statistical data.
Ask yourself this question, why would they fly a French media personality over to do a technology startup that’s eerily like all the other ones?
People in California don’t really have an affinity for the French.
They’re trying to push a square peg into a round hole here. They must want this guy REALLY bad.
Do people have time – at work or at home – to watch crappy videos & bloggers promoting themselves?
pimping your investment through a permission-based marketing ploy belongs somewhere else. the credibility of this site dropped a notch.
Aww they didn’t approve my trackback. Guess they didn’t like the title: “Semenmic”…?
“People in California don’t really have an affinity for the French.”
Uh ?
I’ve read all of the comments and many are missing the point. The power behind Seesmic is not the interface or its Twitter like video posts. Its power is in the data behind the videos and the community that Loic and company are building planet wide. The coming API and access to the data model will make this a hugely popular interface. Other applications are similar in functionality but not in data. Seesmic is a next generation web element.