Seesmic buys a Twitter client: a big step for desktop micro-broadcasting
So, overhyped social tool Seesmic has acquired the popular Twitter client, Twhirl. Desktop clients, have been an important part of its success, it’s far less compelling to load up Twitter.com all the time.
I hope Seesmic didn’t pay much for Twirl: only so much as it would cost them to develop it in house, and not a cent more. Mainly that’s because there are loads of Twitter clients out there, many very good, and the barriers to switching are largely nonexistent – in fact, alternative clients are advertised right within Twhirl (see right >>), powerful advertising since it’s an implicit recommendation from your contacts. At least they get a good Adobe AIR coder, and some cross-selling opportunities to Twhirl users.
Media for a long time pre-Internet was consolidated in the hands of huge, singular broadcasters like the BBC, TimeWarner, newspapers, radio stations. Now, members of the public can broadcast themselves (I won’t pass judgement here as to whether that’s particularly valuable to society… the techno-utopian says yes, the techno-cynic says no)
When I post short blocks of text to Twitter, short posts on my blog, a quick video to YouTube, etc, I’m broadcasting myself in micro-format compared to the 30 minute format standard TV broadcast. This is being done from my very own desktop (including browser, mobile, playstation, etc), not in a professional studio/newsroom. This studio-> desktop transition is the same seismic shift as that seen in digital graphics and typesetting during the 80s and 90s). What I suspect motivates Seesmic’s M+A is this: just like Adobe, Corel et al got big on the back of a desktop revolution in publishing, Seesmic feels it can capitalise on the desktop (micro-)broadcasting revolution by building a unified program that people can use as a gateway to broadcasting themselves to various places on the web.
Prediction: 2008/2009 is going to witness many surprise moves in the micro-broadcasting space. Here are some wild guesses to spark your imagination:
- Google could use its YouTube brand to move into media services. If it can face the staggering bandwidth requirements, it could expand beyond video. People already use it to publish their mp3s without a video (with just a static photo e.g. here). This means it becomes a media/publisher services platform (just like Amazon is transforming into a retail services firm; you can use its warehouses, its website, its servers, and soon, its financial IT). Google will seek ways, likely via YouTube, to host or aggregate micro-broadcasting. Perhaps with a purchase of Friendfeed.
- Microsoft Live! will release a unified desktop micro-broadcasting program that lets you microblog (140-character text message) or microvlog (short video blog) and upload it to Twitter or Seesmic respectively (and others of course; ideally they want you to use Microsoft Live). Might also include tools to make your own podcasts.
- Your turn: Facebook will…
Also, what are the odds on Microsoft buying Skype? Stranger things have happened.
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