<![CDATA[Gawker: valleywag, seesmic]]> http://tags.gawker.com/assets/base/img/thumbs140x140/gawker.com.png <![CDATA[Gawker: valleywag, seesmic]]> http://gawker.com/tag/valleywag/seesmic http://gawker.com/tag/valleywag/seesmic <![CDATA[Tech pundits still wasting money? Mais oui!]]> Paris is lovely in December. And even lovelier if someone else is footing the bill! Oblivious to the world's economic meltdown, 1,500 self-involved, self-indulgent opinionators have flown to France for Le Web, a meet-and-greet on the tech circuit.

Le Web is the brainchild of Loic Le Meur, an entrepreneur best known for peddling a worthless French blog startup to Six Apart, who has parlayed his very slight resume into press clips that include being named one of BusinessWeek's 25 most important people on the Web. (One of the 25 most self-important, more like it.)

Le Meur is handsome enough, improbably tall for a Frenchman, and charming when he wants to be. As a businessman, he's hopeless; his online-video startup, Seesmic, recently had layoffs and is said to be a hot mess. But it's as a showman that Le Meur excels. He outraged bloggers in 2006 by inviting Nicolas Sarkozy, then a French presidential candidate, to speak. (His critics viewed the invitation as crassly sullying the purity of a Web-focused event — as if the Internet were somehow apart from politics.)

To understand the problem, look no further than the guest list, which includes media ubiquity Marissa Mayer, the Google VP in charge of looking good and making money; an also-ran at MySpace; and Chris Anderson, organizer of the TED conference series. Just imagine: You can fly to Europe to attend a tech conference, where you can hear an organizer of a tech conference speak!

And yet people pay thousands of dollars — rather, charge thousands of dollars to their expense accounts — to do exactly that. They attend parties where they can meet exactly the same crowd they just saw last month at Web 2.0 Summit, and before that at TechCrunch50, and before that at Brainstorm, and before that at D6. Round and round they ride, on the tech-junket carousel. Why doesn't the tech-conference crowd give some of their social-networking tools a try and just gab with each other online? At a time when 533,000 Americans lost their jobs last month, that seems less embarrassing than flying to France to party.

(Photo via referencement-internet)

]]> http://gawker.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=5104915&view=rss&microfeed=true <![CDATA[The layoff lie]]> A wave of layoffs is sweeping startupland. But why? "Today is my last day at Revision3," writes Damon Berger, one of the victims, in a mass email. "Due to budgetary cutbacks that are a direct result of the economic meltdown, I will no longer be employed at the company." Revision3, an online-video startup, has slashed five Web-video shows from its lineup, and with it some unknown number of employees. But are we to believe that collateralized debt obligations killed "Internet Superstar"? Of course not.

Yes, online advertising is headed for a slowdown — but signs of problems were present in the market well before Wall Street went into crisis. An explosion of usage had created a supply of space for ads that far outpaced marketers' demand. A recession will further temper demand. Berger, and countless like him at ad-supported enterprises, would have ended up on the street regardless. (Which is a pity, since I've met Berger, and he strikes me as personable, clever, and eminently employable elsewhere.)

Revision3, best known as the home of Digg founder Kevin Rose's beer-chugging Diggnation podcast, has always been the kind of lovably goofy startup one hopes does well despite itself. Anyone who suffered through "Internet Superstar" knew the show was going down. It failed on the merits, not because of distant economic forces beyond anyone's control.

To paraphrase Tolstoy: Successful startups are all alike. But every unsuccessful startup is unsuccessful in its own way.

And so with all the startups whose managers have jumped on the firebus. If they had run their businesses efficiently, they wouldn't have needed to fire anyone. They are laying people off now not because of an economic imperative, but because they have a convenient excuse to cover their mistakes.

Revision3 should always have concentrated on its main shows, and found cheap ways to experiment with new shows, as it's doing now. Helium.com should have figured out that there's not much money in user-generated content before laying off a third of its 110 employees. And Seesmic? Well, Seesmic should never have launched at all, good economy or bad.

I'm declaring the layoff window shut. Big companies lay people off because of economic conditions; startups lay people off because their managers have fundamentally misjudged some aspect of their business. Any startup CEO who lays people off, from here on out, should be held accountable for his own mistakes. Blaming the economy for your cuts? So mid-October 2008.

]]> http://gawker.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=5069408&view=rss&microfeed=true <![CDATA[Seesmic wins at layoff spin]]> "At Seesmic, a video blogging service, the day of reckoning — when it runs out of the $6 million it raised in May — will come in three years. To make the money last, Loïc Le Meur, the chief executive, recently laid off seven employees, or one-third of his staff, and cut all projects not directly related to the video service." Great messaging, Loic. Now for the bad news: No video blogging service will get its picture in the NYT until Web 3.0.

]]> http://gawker.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=5069255&view=rss&microfeed=true <![CDATA[Tough times, unoriginal blog posts]]> Mahalo founder: "Tough times, hard decisions." Zillow founder: "Difficult times, difficult decisions." Seesmic founder: "Tough times. Tough decisions." The only thing easy in these times is what to headline your post about the employees you just laid off. Also, make sure to note that you are sad.

]]> http://gawker.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=5067396&view=rss&microfeed=true <![CDATA[Why Seesmic's layoffs don't mean what you think they do]]> Seesmic has laid off 7 employees — a third of its staff. Never heard of Seesmic? You must be doing something right with your life. The startup was ridiculous from its very conception as a tool for embedding videos as comments on blogs. Only to people who spend all day reading and commenting on blogs did that sound like a good idea. But that's exactly the kind of people Loic Le Meur attracted to himself — the groupthinking commentards of Silicon Valley, a self-appointed A-list of the blogosphere. To anyone conducting serious business, Le Meur's bloggy pals were an A-list, all right — "A" as in "avoid." Predictably, Le Meur and his investors — a group which includes Michael Arrington, a frequent promoter of Seesmic on his TechCrunch blog — are spinning the layoffs as a result of the recent economic unpleasantness.

Nonsense. Seesmic wasn't just a bad idea; we hear from insiders; it was poorly executed, to boot. The company was in the midst of a top-to-bottom rewrite of its code. In the Seesmic video in which Le Meur announced the layoffs, he alluded to cuts in engineering — people "working behind the scenes" on the product.

What that tells me: Le Meur has given up on this horrendous waste of time and effort, and is just biding his time until he can offload it on someone. He has a good track record of doing that; Six Apart, whispers have it, regrets spending the money it paid for Le Meur's Ublog, a French blogging service. Unfortunately for Le Meur, these are less bubbly times. Will the $6 million he raised in Seesmic's last round see it through next year without an acquisition?

That's the only way in which Seesmic's fate is connected with the real economy: The suckers who would normally pony up for Le Meur's latest overpuffed adventure are hiding under their desks. Buying Seesmic is just another disaster they can put on their A-for-"avoid"-list.

]]> http://gawker.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=5062843&view=rss&microfeed=true <![CDATA[Seesmic's newest feature: layoffs]]> Seesmic, an online-video startup, is laying off some employees working to create original clips for the short-form video site. The official explanation, from newly unemployed video host Rachael Joy: "Seesmic's not a content site, never has been. It's a conversation tool." Joy was host of the startup's daily news and views "Seesmic du Jour." Talk of layoffs is not the conversation founder Loïc Le Meur wanted to start about Seesmic, which lets users pretend they're talking to each other through the medium of short, recorded webcam clips. Joy delivered the news with a wagging finger, in a spot-on parody of the bombastic Le Meur.

Before flirting with the idea of Seesmic as an online-video studio, Le Meur had been aggressively pushing Seesmic as a platform for blog comments, even trying to convince Valleywag to deploy the company's product. The startup had been engaged in a major redesign, already delayed, that would have highlighted its video shows, according to a source. The layoffs suggest that plan is off. It's also attempting a complete rewrite of the site's backend code — an expensive endeavor. One has to wonder if this is a truly a strategy shift or just a ploy to slash the company's burn rate.

]]> http://gawker.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=5050663&view=rss&microfeed=true <![CDATA[TechCrunch advertiser AmateurMatch offers "real" sex]]> Nothing like cheap run-of-network ads to get the blood pumping in the morning — a tipster from Blighty spotted this ad for AmateurMatch offering "Real members, real sex" to TechCrunch readers yesterday. (Yes, I know, it could be a fake, but where's the fun in that?) By "real" I assume they mean as opposed to the cam chats you might enjoy on fellow advertiser Seesmic. Personally, I wonder how Siemens feels about all this.

]]> http://gawker.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=5050403&view=rss&microfeed=true <![CDATA[Cal Henderson sighting at 330 Ritch]]> Stubblicious Flickr developer Cal Henderson and his "fake wife," Pownce community liaison Ariel Waldman, were sharing a precious booth with their entourage at yet another overpacked Seesmic party. Here, Waldman tries to chat with Laughing Squid founder Scott Beale over the din. Mahalo CEO Jason Calacanis and Twitter cofounder Evan Williams, probably fed up with the crowds, have ditched 330 Ritch for the Plista party at Fluid.

]]> http://gawker.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=5048285&view=rss&microfeed=true <![CDATA[Michael Arrington almost made to wait in line with plebes]]> TechCrunch founder Michael Arrington just wants to get a scotch and hit on girls at the Seesmic party at 330 Rich, but ended up stuck in the multi-hour-long line outside the closing night party. Dutiful Seesmic founder Loïc Le Meur personally came out to escort him past the velvet ropes. For a second there, people might have come to the conclusion that TechCrunch50 was some kind of democracy.

]]> http://gawker.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=5048271&view=rss&microfeed=true <![CDATA[Wellington Partners happy to spend our worthless American currency]]> At the brand new Contemporary Jewish Museum in San Francisco last night, the team at European VC firm Wellington Partners celebrated the addition of an outpost in Palo Alto to their existing offices in London and Munich with a swell mixer. The hors d'oeuvres? Cheese gougères, tiny lamb chops, mushroom napoleons, Kobe beef sliders, croutons with creme fraiche, smoked salmon and caviar and a bite-sized tuna tartar, all washed down with French wine which topped $300 a bottle — which, as the joke went, "Is like, what, 20 euros?" Mahalo founder Jason Calacanis explained that for European private equity investors, the American market offers a double-dip:

Investing in companies, even at late stages, is a relative bargain because of the strong euro, and once a company goes public, the returns are doubled again because companies trade at a much higher price-to-earnings ratio on average than the do in Europe. However, after telling a story about entrepreneurs turning land in southwestern France being managed by the government into a newly productive wine region from which guests were tippling the bounty, Wellington's Eric Archambeau explained that the new office was going to focus on business development. "Who needs another VC in Silicon Valley?" he quipped.

One of the companies in which Wellington has invested is Seesmic, the online-video tool founded by the crushingly gregarious Loic le Meur, who bent our ear over enabling his company's technology in our comments. If it means TechCrunch's Michael Arrington might drop by to share some of his deep thoughts, then I might just be able to make Le Meur's case with our publisher.

]]> http://gawker.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=5023870&view=rss&microfeed=true <![CDATA[Seesmic launch illustrates how Metcalfe's Law and Dunbar's Number correlate]]> Some of the most pervasive buzzwords in the Valley are terms to classify product or idea adoption, such as "early adopter," which serves to define a behavior profile of a customer or user who's always trying the newest new thing. As a product's appeal widens, it begins to attract the "early mainstream," or the network of acquaintances inspired by the early adopter to try the not newest but still new thing. Now that Seesmic has launched publicly and gotten a vag-tastic kickoff, the early mainstream has started to participate, as exemplified by the drunk cry for help (or a mockery thereof) above, which is much more typical of YouTube than the community fostered on Seesmic while the site was still only adding users by invitation — this earnest response is more typical of Seesmic's early adopters. Which means we need to update another hoary Valley cliche, Metcalfe's Law.

Metcalfe's Law, first forumlated by Robert Metcalfe, states that "the value of a telecommunications network is proportional to the square of the number of users of the system." The problem is, that as actual humans connect, the number of people you can connect to instantly swells far past Dunbar's Number, or "The Rule of 150," another popular concept among social network theorists, which Robin Dunbar uses to describe the typical amount of other people a person can realistic communicate, connect and relate to.

Hence, I'd like to propose a synthesis of the two, which you're welcome to call West's Corollary. To whit:

As the number of users on an online social network grows, your perception of the ratio of idiots to otherwise will approach infinity.

Where "idiots" is intentionally subjective, because of course one person's idiot is another's comic genius. Ultimately, only 150 people you interact with will be not-idiots, a number that will quickly be dwarfed as everyone else on the planet signs up.

]]> http://gawker.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=5017711&view=rss&microfeed=true <![CDATA[Loic Le Meur goes spelunking for the mythical g-spot in Seesmic demo]]> $1795 a head is a lot to pay for a sex ed lesson, let alone a tech conference, so why not combine the two? That was apparently the idea behind "Liquid Conversations" at Supernova, which nearly ran off the rails when panelist Loic Le Meur demonstrated his startup Seesmic, which the ebullient founder describes as "video for Twitter for video." The video he chose featured an international group of users and a talking head with a velvet vagina puppet leading them on an intrepid search for the g-spot. Le Meur may have thought the full-motion lesson would shake up the room of predominantly male attendees. But putting female sexuality front-and-center, especially when the few women in attendance just wanted equal time on the mic, not necessarily equal time for their orgasms, was just awkward for everyone. And it didn't do much for the sex ed lesson, either, nevermind that in another context it would have been not only appropriate but sorely needed. More sexploration on Seesmic after the jump.

]]> http://gawker.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=5017729&view=rss&microfeed=true <![CDATA[Bloggin' journos want to bring sexy back to classified ads]]> Steve Outing, a former editor at the Poynter Institute and self-described "new-media visionary" Christopher Ryan have started a blog to brainstorm ideas for new classified advertising business models. While quotes from the likes of new media pundit JD Lasica assert "Craig Newmark of Craigslist is not the devil incarnate," the level of obsession is evidenced in the site's popular categories. One cure for the classified ad revenue decline fever suggested? More Seesmic! [ReinventingClassifieds]

]]> http://gawker.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=394087&view=rss&microfeed=true <![CDATA[Who's going to TechTalk Menorca, the Balearic boondoggle?]]> Martin Varsavsky, the founder of Wi-Fi startup Fon, has concocted another excuse for Web 2.0's jet set to rack up frequent-flier miles and buy carbon offsets: It's called Menorca TechTalk, held on Varsavsky's ranch on the Mediterranean island this weekend. The website is password-protected, but Valleywag got a list of who's going. It's a curious mix of professional conference attendees, like Rapleaf's Auren Hoffman, Loïc Le Meur of Seesmic, TechCrunch's Michael Arrington, and David Sifry of Technorati, mixed in with a few people who have day jobs. There are even Googlers on the list — and when have you known those lot to leave the protective bubble of Mountain View? Oddly, Jimmy Wales did not seem to make the cut, though his New York patroness, Louise Blouin MacBain, is listed. In the comments, sort the TechTalkers into your preferred categories.

  • Alan Levy (BlogTalkRadio)
  • Alec Oxenford (OLX, DineroMail)
  • Alejandro Estrada (DineroMail)
  • Alexis Bonte (Erepublik.com)
  • Andrew McLaughlin (Google)
  • Anil de Mello (Mobuzz)
  • Arturo J. Paniagua (Hipertextual)
  • Auren Hoffman (Rapleaf)
  • Axel Schmiegelow (Sevenload, Denkwerk Group)
  • Benjamí Villoslada (Menèame)
  • Brent Hoberman (Mydeco)
  • Carlos Martìn (IG Expansiòn)
  • Cedric Maloux
  • Christophe F. Maire (Nokia gate5, investor)
  • Claudia Gisiger-Gonzalez (UNHCR)
  • Dan Dubno (Blowing Things Up)
  • David Sifry (Technorati)
  • Demian M. Bellumio (Cyloop)
  • Eduardo Arcos (Hipertextual)
  • Efe Cakarel (The Auteurs)
  • Ehssan Dariani (studiVZ)
  • Esteban Sosnik
  • Esther Dyson (EDventure)
  • Felix Petersen (Plazes)
  • Hans Peter Brøndmo (Plum)
  • Ibrahim Evsan (Sevenload)
  • Ivan Communod (Vpod.tv)
  • Jacob Hsu (Symbio)
  • James Gutierrez (Progress Financial)
  • Jennifer L. Schenker (BusinessWeek)
  • John Markoff (The New York Times)
  • Joichi Ito (Creative Commons, Six Apart Japan, investor)
  • Jon Berrojalbiz (Trading Motion)
  • Jonas Birgersson (Labs2)
  • Jörg Rohleder (Vanity Fair)
  • José María Figueres (Grupo Felipe IV)
  • Jose Marin (IG Expansion)
  • Julio Alonso (Weblogs SL)
  • Lars Hinrichs (XING)
  • Loïc Le Meur (Seesmic)
  • Louise T Blouin MacBain (Louise Blouin Media)
  • Lukasz Gadowski (Spreadshirt.com, investor)
  • Lukasz Wejchert (Onet.pl)
  • Marc Samwer (European Founders Fund)
  • Marcelo Claure (Brightstar Corp.)
  • Marko Ahtisaari (Blyk, Dopplr, FON)
  • Mathias Entenmann (Betfair)
  • Matt Biddulph (Dopplr)
  • Megan Smith (Google)
  • Michael Arrington (Techcrunch)
  • Michael Jackson (Mangrove Capital Partners)
  • Michael Wolf (Farallon Point)
  • Nikesh Arora (Google)
  • Ola Ahlvarsson (Result, FON)
  • Om Malik (Giga Omni Media)
  • R.J. Friedlander (Grupo Planeta)
  • Ricardo Galli (Menéame)
  • Rodrigo Sepúlveda Schulz (Vpod.tv)
  • Rupert Schäfer (DLD, Hubert Burda Media)
  • Scott Rafer (Lookery, Mashery, Winksite)
  • Tariq Krim (Netvibes)
  • Thomas Crampton (Next Media)
]]> http://gawker.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=389017&view=rss&microfeed=true <![CDATA[Why Silicon Valley just won't shut up about FriendFeed]]> "Cathy Brooks is a typically unapologetic Silicon Valley Web addict," writes Brad Stone in the New York Times. "Last week alone, she produced more than 40 pithy updates on the text messaging service Twitter, uploaded two dozen videos to various video sharing sites, posted seven photographs on the Yahoo image service Flickr and one item to the online community calendar Upcoming." Usually, when one identifies a friend as an addict, an intervention is in order. But Stone, who seems to have spent so much time in San Francisco's tech circles that he's gone native, suggests more technology instead: Specifically, FriendFeed, which gathers all of this online activity in one place, making it marginally easier for Brooks's benighted friends to keep up with her online logorrhea.

Brooks is employed by Seesmic, a videomail startup, so some of the "two dozen videos" she made could arguably be seen as all in a day's work. But the rest? The mainstream readers of the Times must wonder what people like Brooks do all day. One supposes they could sign up on FriendFeed to find out, but they, unlike the people of the Valley, have real jobs. Brooks, for her part, makes no apologies for her online chattiness: Her website sums up her career from a first-grade report card: "Cathy likes to participate in any project, so long as she gets to talk." In that, she has found a community of like minds.

"The question from our standpoint is, how you find signal in the noise?" asks Peter Fenton, a VC backer of FriendFeed at Benchmark Capital. That assumes that there is any signal. Such is the complaint of Michael Arrington, who bemoans his 954 unread Facebook messages, and demands that Facebook make changes to accommodate him. Has it ever occurred to Arrington that he is, in the argot of product managers, an "edge case"? Entrepreneurs desperate for coverage, and aware that he never reads email, are trying a new way to reach him — and Arrington, in his compulsive neophilia, actually tries out the new medium, for a while. He then quickly tires of it, and throws a tantrum. Catering to such a person's whims is no way to run a company.

Is information overload really anything more than a self-inflicted disease of the Valley? I doubt it. But to the extent it is, Facebook is far better poised to solve the problem than a startup like FriendFeed. The Times mistakenly reports that Facebook is playing catch-up in gathering up its users' online activities from across the Web. Balderdash. It's just done a lousy job of marketing its ability to do so.

The technology behind Beacon — the Facebook feature which ruined Christmas for some Facebook users, by revealing their online purchases, and has gotten Facebook sued for allegedly violating a Blockbuster video-renter's privacy — is now being used to report posts to Twitter, Digg, Yelp, and Flickr. Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg botched Beacon by presenting it as an advertising technology last fall. His recent spin that it was a technology meant for programmers, not Madison Avenue types, hasn't taken hold. It's likely Facebook will have to drop the Beacon name altogether before it successfully revives the technology.

But Facebook's News Feed is the most logical place to gather together the sum of its users' online activity. The users, after all, are already there. FriendFeed might make a logical acquisition for the likes of Microsoft, Yahoo, or most likely of all, Google (its founders are all ex-Googlers). But a radical paradigm for the future of communication? Sorry, Zuckerberg got there first.

(Photo by Brian Solis)

]]> http://gawker.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=387155&view=rss&microfeed=true <![CDATA[Arrington and French pal in Twitter snit over TED]]> TechCrunch's Michael Arrington and Frenchman Loic Le Meur got into a 140-character Twitter war this afternoon. The topic? The TED conference and French military history. Arrington said TED is lame because he wasn't given a free pass: "I defame anything cool that ignores me, until it stops doing so. it's worked so far." Loic defended the conference: "TED is the best conference... Pay your tickets it's worth it!" Arrington and Loic then claim to "remove" each other from their friends lists and Arrington made some tired jokes about France's inability to win a war.

Le Meur then offered to buy Arrington out of Seesmic, a videomail startup Le Meur founded and in which Arrington has invested and written up in TechCrunch, conflicts of interest and all. I have to think they're joking, and if so, they caught Dave Winer with the gag. "PS: Welcome to MikeA's shit-list. Been here for a while. Not so bad. :-)" That's the best part of this farce so far. I can't wait for the ritualized kiss-and-make-up session.

TechCrunch: TED is such a lame conference. And I'm not just saying that because I wasn't invited. :-)

TechCrunch: regarding TED attacks - I defame anything cool that ignores me, until it stops doing so. it's worked so far.

loiclemeur: @TechCrunch and @Scobleizer TED is the best conference, the only blogger I know going 4free is Ethan Zuckerman. Pay your tickets it's worth it !

TechCrunch: @loiclemeur - id rather spend the money on a vacation. or donating it to Obama.

loiclemeur: @TechCrunch fair enough, don't regret a single $ from the TED cost. Not about news or reporting, very different.

TechCrunch: @loiclemeur - whatever. I'm erasing you from my friends.

loiclemeur: @TechCrunch I am also erasing you from my friends. Actually even blocking you. Please do not ping me anymore.

TechCrunch: @loiclemeur: for your reference: http://www.albinoblacksheep.com/text/france.html

TechCrunch: "Going to war without France is like going deer hunting without an accordion."

TechCrunch: France: "They're there when they need you."

TechCrunch: ok, ok, last one. http://tinyurl.com/2opkp7

TechCrunch: i am writing a post. tentatively titled "Microsoft: The EU's ATM Machine"

loiclemeur: @all the french here. Check what @TechCrunch blogs about http://www.albinoblacksheep.com/text/france.html

TechCrunch: @loiclemeur "French friends please help me start a global fight against TechCrunch" hahahahahahaha

]]> http://gawker.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=362069&view=rss&microfeed=true <![CDATA[Loic Le Meur hates to "do PR on funding" — but does it anyway]]>
1 minute, 37 seconds into this video, Seesmic founder Loic Le Meur says, "It's very 1990s-ish to do PR on funding." And yet that's exactly what he had planned to do tomorrow, complete with a ridiculously outdated "embargo" order on news of his videomail company's $6 million in funding. Curiously, Dave Winer, featured in this video and previously mentioned as a Seesmic investor, didn't make the press release's "complete list."

]]> http://gawker.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=356179&view=rss&microfeed=true <![CDATA[Loic Le Meur raises $6 million for videomail startup]]> Blogger turned entrepreneur Loic Le Meur has raised $6 million to inflict on the world a decades-old technology thoroughly rejected by consumers: videomail. He calls it Seesmic, and has repackaged videomail as "video conversations." Really, what this means is that the same people who film videoblogs you promise to watch but never do have a new way of forcing themselves on you. Video is one of the most inefficient means of communication, suited only for self-important types who overvalue their own thoughts and undervalue the time of those they speak to. Which makes it perfect for Le Meur and the star-studded list of investors he's rounded up — including TechCrunch's Michael Arrington, whose blog has conveniently touted Seesmic at every turn. The press release is ludicrously embargoed, since it tells us nothing we haven't already heard from loquacious Loic. All the same, here it is:

From: Heddi Cundle Sent: 13 February 2008 To: [redacted] Subject: Seesmic Raises $6 million - Embargo Release

I hope you're well. Please find below a press release under embargo until 5am (pst) tomorrow. Please let me know if you'd like to interview Loic Le Meur by phone before or after embargo lifts.

I'll call shortly but any immediate questions, don't hesitate to contact me. My details are at the end of this email.

Kind regards

————

Seesmic Raises $6 Million to Power

the World's Video Conversations

A-List investors are led by Niklas Zennström's Atomico and include Steve Case, Ron Conway, Jeff Clavier, and Reid Hoffman

SAN FRANCISCO, CA - February 14, 2008 - Seesmic (www.seesmic.com), the highly anticipated new start-up from Loic Le Meur, today announced that it has raised $6 million from internationally renowned investors. The investment is lead by Atomico - an investment group founded by Niklas Zennström and Janus Friis. The complete list of investors is:

* Michael Arrington - Founder, TechCrunch
* Steve Case - Co-Founder and former CEO and Chairman, AOL
* Jeff Clavier - Managing Partner, SoftTech VC
* Ron Conway - Early investor, Google
* Steve Garfield - Pioneering video blogger
* Dan Gillmor - Director, Knight Center for Digital Media Entrepreneurship
* Reid Hoffman - Founder, LinkedIn
* Michael Parekh - Managing Director, Goldman Sachs
* Mark Pincus - Co-Founder and former Chairman and CEO, SupportSoft
* Ariel Poler - Founder and former CEO, IPRO and Topica
* Jeff Pulver - Chairman and Founder, Pulver.com
* Martin Varsavsky - Founder, FON

Until now, online communication has lacked personality, being limited to text (IM, SMS, email). Seesmic changes that, bringing conversation alive through video, allowing users to be seen and heard and to broadcast themselves. Still in closed alpha, Loic is building Seesmic in the open, with the help and guidance of the Seesmic community. Through his daily video blog loic.tv and the "feature request" function on the Seesmic site, Loic and his team gather suggestions and solicit feedback from the community about the platform and its functionality.

"I'm thrilled to have such an unprecedented group of high-profile business leaders, entrepreneurs, and angel investors validate the potential for Seesmic," said Loic Le Meur, Founder and CEO of Seesmic. "This significant investment will enable us to launch a site built by and for our community, incorporating the products and features they've told us they want through their Seesmic conversations."

"Seesmic has grasped the opportunity to evolve the way people express themselves and converse online. Theirs is an exciting vision and I look forward to supporting the team," said Niklas Zennström, Co-Founder of Skype.

"At last, the Internet is really social: you can see and hear people express their ideas and thoughts, you can join in, and you can make new friends. With Seesmic, everyone can participate in live conversations rich with personality, bought to life through video," commented Ron Conway.

About Seesmic

Seesmic brings online conversation to life through video. Straight from their webcams, Seesmic enables users to easily post videos of their thoughts and ideas and participate in video conversations with the world.

Founded by Loic Le Meur - France's best-known blogger, entrepreneur, founder of the largest European web event LeWeb3, and Internet Advisor to French President Sarkozy - Seesmic is changing the way people converse on the Web.

What Seesmic's community says about Seesmic:

"The difference between YouTube and Seesmic is that YouTube puts video at the center, whereas Seesmic puts people at the center," Stephanie Booth, Lausanne, Switzerland's best known blogger.

Heddi Cundle
Consort Partners Ltd

]]> http://gawker.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=356061&view=rss&microfeed=true <![CDATA[Fred Wilson praises Loic Le Meur's startup — but will he invest?]]> Why is entrepreneur Loic Le Meur grinning from ear to ear? VC Fred Wilson declares that he's getting addicted to the "video Twittering" provided by Seesmic, Le Meur's new startup. But it's not clear that Wilson's going to put his money where his mouth is.

Le Meur has already snagged $6 million in venture capital for Seesmic, a site which is a bit like YouTube, a bit like Twitter, and a bit like Justin.tv. His new investors include Reid Hoffman, the hyperconnected chairman of LinkedIn; Skype founders Niklas Zennström and Janus Friis, and angel investor Ron Conway, the startup ATM of Silicon Valley.

So why is Wilson in town? Here's where it gets interesting. Brad Feld of Foundry Group, a frequent coinvestor with Wilson's Union Square Ventures, announced on Twitter yesterday that he was in San Francisco to meet with the New York-based Wilson, who had just flown in on a delayed flight. Shortly after he landed, Wilson posted a video to Seesmic. Feld then posted that he had just attended an unnamed startup's board meeting, which planned to announce his investment on Monday.

Not Seesmic, though — that company plans to launch, officially, at Demo at the end of this month. Announcing the company on Monday would be a breach of etiquette, at the very least, for a participant in the prestigious startup conference. And Le Meur is too French to be so blatantly impolite.

So what are Wilson and Feld up to? Given Feld's and Wilson's Twitters, it doesn't seem like there would have been time for them to meet yesterday, except at the unnamed startup's board meeting. It makes sense that they'd be in cahoots on another deal. The other clues in Feld's blog post: The company is headed by a "star" with previous startup successes, has about 20 employees, and is hiring another 20, including two software product managers. Any ideas? Leave them in the comments, or drop us a line.

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