Late-Night Seesmic Desperation Yields Results

Guest Post By Cyndy Aleo-Carreira (E-mail / Twitter)

I've made no secret of the fact that I'm not a huge fan of social media video sites. Videos take too much time to watch and slow me down in my daily consumption of the firehose. I'm still sitting on a 14-minute ode to copyright from Duncan Riley that I just can't bring myself to sacrifice 14 minutes of my already over-stuffed day to watch, yet I also can't bring myself to mark it as read.

That being said, when I was fiddling with Seesmic one day, my two-year-old became enthralled with the idea of people talking to her out of my laptop. She's been a long-time fan of iChat for that reason, and, against my usual parental judgment, let her record a video. She's now a bona fide Seesmic addict, begging to post a video nearly every day.

Last night, we put her to bed and were treated to non-stop screaming. At her age, it usually means she's overtired, but in this case, she was terrified after watching Pixar's Monsters Inc. earlier in the evening with her older siblings. To calm her down, I asked her if she wanted to "do a Seesmic" as she calls it, and we recorded a video talking about how she was scared of monsters.

Within a few minutes, she had a reply from Seesmic user robertp with a suggestion he's used with his own kids. She and I went on a video search through YouTube for a video that featured at least one of the voice actors from the movie, and hit the jackpot with a clip of John Goodman appearing on her very favorite show, Sesame Street. She was able to see that Sully was just an animated character voiced by a very friendly looking man who happens to like triangles, and she calmed right down. Of course, she loves getting replies, and had to post one as well, thanking Robert for replying to her "bidee-yo."


I have to take back my previous gripes about social video, however. It works better than anything I've ever tried to get a frightened toddler back to sleep. And after 10 PM, it sure was easier to get help from a virtual stranger than it would have been to phone one of my friends, who were surely already asleep.

Disqus' Partner Strategy: Is FriendFeed Integration Up Next?

Today's news on SezWho's acquisition of Tejit stirred up, appropriately, a number of conversations around the Web regarding blog commenting platforms, and comparisons between SezWho and Disqus were common. But while some tried to paint the two products as competition, Disqus founder Daniel Ha publicly looked to open talks with SezWho, while, elsewhere, FriendFeed co-founder Paul Buchheit confirmed that he's reached out to the Disqus team to make conversations on the popular social aggregation site two-way, which could mark yet another important name on Disqus' growing list of successful partnerships.

In fact, I didn't have to look far to spot Daniel's conversation with Jitendra Gupta, the CEO of SezWho, for it happened in the comments section of my coverage this morning.

See: SezWho CEO Jitendra Gupta Speaks on Tejit Buy: Comments

Although in coverage of the announcement both here and elsewhere, Gupta had made comments about Disqus' removing blog comments from the original site, and centralizing them on their own, rather than declare war against SezWho, Daniel instead played peacemaker, writing, "Congrats on the acquisition. Sounds like you guys are doing something a bit different than us. We should talk about doing something about this fragmentation. Game?"

This led to Jitendra's offering to grab drinks with Daniel, and the two now look like they're indeed game to set up a conversation which could lead to a great deal of collaboration between the two players.

Meanwhile, as FriendFeed continues its rapid growth, gaining significant mindshare, in part due to excitement displayed by top bloggers like Robert Scoble, Jeremiah Owyang, Fred Wilson, Loic LeMeur, Thomas Hawk and Steve Rubel, the fact that comments on FriendFeed aren't also migrating to the author's blog posts hasn't sat well with everyone. It's uncommon that a few days can go by without one blogger or another begging to have the comments on FriendFeed come back to their site, whether through a blog plug-in or some other way. While I believe a community should be able to hold parallel conversations, not all agree.

Buchheit, in response to a post from Wilson titled Web Discussions: Leaving The Instigator Out, said that he had reached out to Disqus to solve this commenting silo.

"I've been in contact with the Disqus team, and I hope to add the option to copy comments though to Disqus in the not too distant future," Buchheit wrote, also adding, as I believe, "Many of my (FriendFeed) comments aren't relevant in the original context... In many cases, (FriendFeed) is enabling new types of comments that would not (or should not) have occurred in the past."

By forging a partnership with Disqus, FriendFeed users could comment on FriendFeed items, and have comments also post to the originating blog, just as other services, including Fav.or.it and Plaxo have implemented. Combined with the recent introduction of video comments from Seesmic, and the above conversation with SezWho, you can see Disqus' strategy develop, to be open to partnerships of all kinds, establishing their service as one of the most versatile, almost default, in the nascent comment replacement market. It's very smart, and one that will get them a lot of good will in a blogosphere ready to accept new, innovative, approaches to communication.

Disqus and Seesmic Teaming Up for Video Comments

It's only been a few weeks since I integrated Disqus commenting with my blog, but I've already reached the point where it would be hard to consider what life was like before Disqus came along. Overnight, with the help of Daniel Ha's excellent customer service, I went from flat Blogger comments that were a hassle to simplified, threaded, personalized comments in Disqus, which integrate easily with other services I use, including FriendFeed.

Today, Disqus is looking to take things to another level, offering integration with Seesmic for video comments. Now, all bloggers using Disqus as their comments engine have the option to enable viewers to leave a video response, and not just a simple text comment.

While video comments haven't yet reached the mainstream, TechCrunch, whose Michael Arrington is an investor in Seesmic, deployed the feature not too long ago. By integrating with Disqus, this should provide Seesmic with a much wider base for distribution, especially among leading technology bloggers, who are rapidly making Disqus a standard.

I'm happy to report that as of this morning, this site is one of the first to integrate Seesmic video comments with Disqus. Soon, you just might even see me leaving midnight video rants around the blogosphere. If you're willing to take a risk, try out the new video commenting system, and let me know what you think!