is it too much of a pun to say seesmic rocks?

I’d like to think so, but seesmic is pretty cool. It’s a kind of video microblogging if you’re not familiar with it. It’s awesome that you can just press a button and record video right on the screen and upload it to a threaded video conversation. Now yes you can post a video response in a similar way on YouTube, but there are considerable differences between the two that largely emerge from the interface and presentation of media.

On YouTube you generally have many more text comments than video comments. I haven’t done a formal study; that’s just my observation. Text and video comments are essentially separate threads. In addition video comments on YouTube can be just a load of spam or disconnected matter.

So why am I blogging about it rather than going to seesmic? I guess in part b/c I think folks on seesmic probably get tired of meta conversations. However, one of the things that’s interesting to me about the video microblogging is how the interface and the camera situate the composition. Seesmic entries are largely impromptu. That might change, but right now it seems like the ethos is to just get on and express (or at least perform that way, right?). For the most part though, I think that is the compositional approach or at least the approach that users get to once they reach a certain level of comfort with the site.

A big part of that though is becoming accustomed to the otherwise uncanny experience of seeing yourself on the screen as you are recording. You have any number of choices to make–close ups, mid-shots, lighting. Some people use sock puppets on occasion. There’s the issue of eye contact, gestures, etc. The aesthetic in part seems to be experimenting with one’s visual capture until reaching an affective state where the uncanniness disappears and the video microblog flows with the ease of a twitter or a blog post or something in between. Indeed there is a sense or promise of using seesmic to meet exigencies as low as those of twitters.

We’ll see.

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