Video Twitter (?): Seesmic

Only a short post as they are still in alpha. Check out : Seesmic – “The dashboard for your videos”. You find a longer review on techcrunch: “Loic Le Meur’s New Startup Launches: Seesmic“.

The service can be described as a video based Twitter, although it is also much more than that. The grand vision behind Seesmic is for it to become a very open online video/television service where people are constantly interacting around both user generated and professional content.

The startup is co-founded by Loïc Le Meur (Organizer of LeWeb3 – Dec 11-12 ’07, in Paris, France) who recently re-located to San Francisco. Stay tuned!

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eBay searches for future growth

eBay’s growth slowed down in the last year(s). One of the major reactions to slowing down growth rates is to shift from a seller-centric approach to a buyer-centric approach. A sea change! For now the main focus is to advance search results (as eBay has a ever changing inventory).

In a recent article from FastCompany titled “eBay’s Chaos Theory” we learn:

“We haven’t even released an eighth of what we’ve done,” says Billingsley. “That’s what excites me. It hasn’t even begun.” Customized pages are in the works. More social-commerce features. An eBay to Go widget with your favorite auction listings to post on your Web site or your MySpace page, complete with a clock to remind you to bid before it’s too late. It all sounds good.

I am very curious how the currently introduced and the upcoming changes will help eBay to get back to a higher growth rate of soled items. Exciting times!

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Rebuilding Hollywood in Silicon Valley’s image

Marc Andreessen has written a very interesting post about the current writer’s strike in Hollywood.

The writers’ strike, and the studios’ response to the strike, may radically accelerate a structural shift in the media industry — a shift of power from studios and conglomerates towards creators and talent.

We all stay tuned what the outcome will look like and if this really accelerates the shit he describes in his post.

Ze Frank says:

Download Link: Ze Frank on the Hollywood writers’ strike.

Let me know if you find other interesting articles about this topic!

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So many pixels… and the Internet

Computer Japan Sep. 1994 I have just run across and old interview in Computing Japan Magazine from 1994 with Kai Krause (Kai’s Power Tools, you remeber?!!). I had the pleasure of meeting him at the Byteburg near Cologne / Germany at an iTV Event.
In the middle/last part of the Interview he talks about how he sees the Internet. Amazing that you could use this part in an interview as of today and nobody may be realizing this…

The information highway to me is a very important issue. I don’t want to bore you, but I want to make just one point. People mistake it to be just a bunch of zippy phone lines, a high speed network of some kind. But that’s not what it is. It is nothi ng less than the future of the entire species! And it’s not dawning on people yet. I’m going to be a little bit of the evangelist on this front, get much more involved. I’ve found that there are so many people talking about it who lust do not know what th ey are talking about. They’ve never been online, they don’t know what it’s all about.

What I mean by the line “future of the species” is — my definition of the information highway has nothing to do with how it’s implemented, whether it’s fiber-optic or this, or satellites or that. In one line: it’s anybody on the planet having access to the sum total of all human knowledge. Our children, 15 years from now, will be able to use whatever implementation of that, and in any frame of reference. Any image, film, book — anything that ever comes up, that mankind has produced, they should hav e that at their fingertips. To be able to see any picture, read any book, and to cross-correlate them — It will have incredible implications.

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Utilizing a corporate blog for company communication

More and more companies are using corporate blogs as part of their (marketing) communication.
But a blog should be a way to open up to your customers. Another example is the new corporate blog of Dell like Micropersuation writes:

Dell Starts Corporate Blog, But Fails to Address Critical Issues
More importantly, Dell really failed to get the blog going the way that they could have. This was a golden opportunity for the company. They could use the blog to engage the community in a genuine conversation on the critical issues that have dogged them for years now as well as the good things they are doing.

Is your company using or planning to use a corporate blog? What are your experiences with corporate blogs?

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