Video conversation startup Seesmic raised another $6 million in a series B financing. The round was co-led by Omidyar Network and Wellington Partners. The series A financing last February, which was also for $6 million, was led by Atomico (the investment vehicle of Skype founders Niklas Zennström and Janus Friis), and included angel investors Reid Hoffman, Steve Case, Jeff Clavier, Ron Conway, and Martin Varsavsky. (Disclosure: TechCrunch founder Michael Arrington was also an angel investor in the first round).
Seesmic is designed to encourage video conversations among loose social groups (many of whom find each other on Seesmic). Since it launched in a private alpha last October, it’s attracted 21,000 users who post about 2,500 videos a day. Those videos, in turn, are watched about 300,000 times a day. Since last week, Seesmic has opened up its doors to all comers.
The company also owns Twhirl, a desktop Twitter/FriendFeed client that has been downloaded 400,000 times. Founder Loic Le Meur estimates that Twhirl accounts for 12 percent of all Twitter messages, and 5 percent of all FriendFeed comments.
Pierre Omidyar, the founder of eBay and Seesmic’s new board member, talks about his investment below:
Did they issue more shares or what?
How does Mike get compensated for his initial investment on a 2nd round?
I’m a member at vcexperts.com but I have been doing so much coding lately that I haven’t been able to watch the videos.
So did Mike make a million bucks off of this?
Goodluck Hope the company takes off and makes millions :}
Congrats to Seesmic!
http://lifehacker.com/396393/t.....be-air-for
If they have 6M, they should buy some of the other 9 Adobe AIR apps and bundle them into an Adobe AIR productivity suite. Destroy Flickr is especially good. I have Flex 3 which I purchased from Adobe earlier this year, but I’m still making flex apps for my software. No AIR yet!
10AM PST….
anyway here is the code for the new embed player for Pierre so people can respond from there too could you replace by this code:
@4
It caught your code.
http://www.php.ca/strip_tags
Madness? This is wordpress.
@5 can you explain what you guys are talking about? I don’t get it - ‘it caught your code?’
Wow, that was a pretty quick second round, but that growth graph is looking pretty good.
sent from: fav.or.it [FID220613]
@6, Loic, the person they put in charge of PR for Seesmic, wrote
“replace by this code:”
I can only assume, unless he’s insane that he actually pasted some code after that. Word press strips code out of comments by design. At least my revision of wordpress did last year. This blog is run by a free script called word press. You can google and download and install it for free.
What is the business model behind seesmic ?
I agree this company is doing some interesting things, but it feels like you write about them daily. Is the quantity of coverage real or in my imagination? And then is it really merited?
@6,
http://www.techcrunch.com/wp-login.php
wordpress.org/download/
There are some references. You could start your own techcrunch if you want. Mike just bogarts FOSS GPL software and puts the Techcrunch logo on it, then lets you guys wow in amazement at his “programming team”
At any rate, Loic, what I do is put code in a .txt file on my server then just put the URL to that file here when I need to show code or a raw email or something. That’s the only thing that works with word press comments.
vim file.txt
[edit file]
Then link the file here with the URL.
Congratulations Seesmic
Congratulations, I still don’t see too many people using the video comment system though, despite the fact that it is now integrated in so many different social platforms.
It would be interesting for Seesmic to study people’s behavior with video exposure. For example, right now, I would leave a video-comment, if it was not for the fact that my hair is a mess, I’m not wearing a shirt, and there are aggressive hip-hop beats playing in the background. That’s not the image of me I want to expose, so I just avoid the video comment solution.
Just a thought…
Bravo to Seesmic !..
This system has a lot of potential.
Would you pay to use seesmic on your site?
Would you advertise on seesmic videos if you have no idea what rantings your brand may be associated with?
It’s like twitter with higher expenses.
@Robert Scoble That was spam man, spam.
Is this amount of money raised in order to finance the numerous travel expenses of Loic ?
It seems he is everywhere except in its company….
I should get at least some of that $6 million, seeing that a conservative average of 400 daily seesmic videos made at my site amount to 16% of seesmic’s total daily videos.
Well, anyway, thank you seesmic and congratulations on the funding.
congrats - BUT: Loic: what is this seesmic all about - I cant’t see any valuable use for the mass consumer market - so I think it is another hype project!
Talk about just printing the press release!
Listen to seemic users rip Loic a new asshole:
http://seesmic.com/v/VFWoN9m9im
..this seems like a pretty high burn-rate given the incremental improvements since their series A. to quote 2000 era hype, ’someone put some more lipstick on ths p*g’ or deadpool within the year…
I never see anyone use these videos…
@23: WOW! Loic, comment? You sound like a petty fool.
Michelle: yeah, but it was video spam on a comment thread about Seesmic video comments. So, was it really spam at all? Hmmm.
Goodluck Hope the company takes off and makes millions :
Another message to Loic:
http://seesmic.com/v/lBCzRYWtSM
Great article, seesmic looks extremely promising!
PS- I noticed the logo in the top left corner of the article said, “Join video the converstion”
Typo?
Congrats on the funding!
I want to reflect a bit on this company. so lets be realistic. I think this product is way over hyped. the mass consumer market would first of all not embrace the idea of video conversations due to the fact that they’re lazy and don’t want to contribute. Secondly, like xavierv said, most people are not ready to show themselves on camera and to the entire world. Thirdly, the idea itself is obscure. it was a little difficult for me to grasp it the first time and I’m a geek! How about the average person who doesn’t know much about tech and web 2.0 … how will seesmic explain the idea to them? right now they’re doing an awful job. Lastly, seesmic is going against some major companies like youtube and facebook/myspace. that’s right I said it! video = youtube and conversation/socializing = facebook/myspace in the minds of consumers. seesmic’s spin on video+conversations is not powerful enough to tackle their competition.
unless I’m missing something or not understanding about the company, I think this another TC hyped up company that won’t go anywhere. but if I am missing something, I do apologize and I would appreciate if someone explains to all of us the value prop behind seesmic.
I pity the VCs shoveling money into this steaming pile. Arrington as an angel investor is the touch of death.
foo you’re right on!
Seesmic is a great service. Used it just today for the first time.
I can see how this will end. They will get bought by a public company originally funded by the same VCs and seesmic will slowly fade away and die.
Is it just me or does it really say ‘Join video the conversation’ in the image on the post???