Seesmic is a relatively new web startup that is already attracting a lot of attention in all corners of the internet. The part French company based in America could be at first glance dismissed as another YouTube knockoff, but delving in further reveals a powerful YouTube/Twitter hybrid brining social interaction to a whole new level.

It’s undeniable that Seesmic is modelled after Twitter considering the company recently acquired Twhirl, an AIR based Twitter client. When you first launch Seesmic after receiving your invite and logging in you’re greeted with what is a very well designed Flash UI (the whole site is one big Flash application) with a large screen for video playback and recent public videos on the left sidebar. Instantly it is obvious that Seesmic is a video collaboration tool allowing you to post videos to the public or to your friends and receive video replies. This is much like the YouTube’s reply that feels somewhat tacked on whereas Seesmic builds itself on this concept.

On the public timeline (just like Twitter) you will find some replies in the form of “RE: title etc”, clicking on it will launch the video reply and the timeline will transform into a list of all replies related to the original. This is where the first usability bug became apparent, I had to scroll right down to the bottom to locate the original video, in this case a I prefer YouTube’s UI that makes it fairly obvious where to find the original. But being in ALPHA stage I am sure this will appear shortly.

Being a Flash based application, Seesmic allows you to record directly from the webpage making communication fairly easy. In minutes I can have one of my egotistic views broadcast across Seesmic and receive troll like responses almost instantly. But here lies another bug that isn’t so much the fault of the service but more of society on a whole, will the public timeline become diluted with random and offensive junk just like YouTube has become? Hopefully Seesmic can deliver an image to the market stating that is more of a thought provoking or collaboration tool, not a place to boast about someone’s next “killer/sick” fight. 

One great use of Seesmic I spotted was the young Daniel Brusilovsky announcing his new idea for a website supporting  the youth in technological activities. Instantly I was able to access all these replies igniting the discussion and brainstorm of this simple idea. This video also had the likes of Robert Scoble encouraging this idea, that was something pretty exciting to witness. I could imagine this sort of brainstorm and active discussion could be replicated over numerous areas such as views on specific news topic or global collaboration between students. Seesmic allows posting to Twitter, so those using Seesmic can be notified of new videos from their friends without leaving the webpage open. 

The use of Flash for the site is also a slight caveat for those used to browsing video sharing websites, the simple browser navigation no longer exists. You cannot use the back button on the browser to go the recent page, because everything runs inside the Flash application. This could take sometime to get used to but isn’t a bad trade-off for not having to wait for the web browser to load another page when switching videos.

One cool feature I’ve noticed popping up is their Wordpress plugin. TechCrunch currently has it installed and gives users to to leave video comments on a blog post even if the user doesn’t have a Seesmic account. This new wave of commenting is a great idea as people are more inclined to leave more beneficial comments if they have a face to the comment. Anyone can hide behind their keyboard.

Seesmic has a bright future ahead of it but needs to adapt quickly if it wants to reach the level of portability and mobility that Twitter has. Seesmic should ramp up production of a mobile client much like Qik, allowing a brainstorm on the go. Without this extension Seesmic could end up as just another video sharing site.