Seesmic Look Launches: Twitter For The Mainstream?

Seesmic has launched a new desktop application for Twitter, called Seesmic Look, that hopes to take Twitter to a "mainstream audience" unfamiliar with Tweeting.

Seesmic Look functions as a Twitter client (you can Tweet from it, follow lists, search in real-time, follow your friends, etc.), but offers some additional navigation options on top of the basics.

HuffPostTech had a chance to sit down with Seesmic founder and CEO Loic Le Meur and see the app in action.

Here's the rundown:

• Seesmic Look gives users the option of sorting Tweets by different categories. People who don't want a firehose of content, but are interested in a specific topic, like celebrity gossip, or tech updates, can follow the aggregated Tweets from Seesmic's "Entertainment" or "Technology" sections, which each present updates from a curated set of Twitterers (@KimKardashian is one of the accounts in the "Celebrity" category). Seesmic Look's built-in, subject-specific directory essentially offers Seesmic-made Twitter lists across a variety of subjects.

• The app also tries to use color and different viewing options to make the Tweets easier to read, although the screensaver-like 'TV mode,' which shows new messages fading in to different parts of the screen, tends to look cluttered and distracting.

• In an effort to entice reluctant Twitter users, Seesmic Look has made it possible for people to follow Tweets without signing in to Twitter--or even without having an account.

• The application operates as a desktop app on Windows 7, Windows Vista, and Windows XP.

So will users take to it? Is it the solution that will get moms, dads, and even grandparents Tweeting? Making sense of Twitter is no easy task, and while maybe this is a step in the right direction, users could be confused by fading and rising text clips. Moreover, users may tire of using the Seesmic-compiled lists that make up the different categories.

Turning a profit from Twitter is the question on everyone's minds, and Le Meur's Seesmic Look presents one way to generate revenue: he has some major paying brands integrated into the app straight from the start.

Brands can also offer their own channels within Seesmic, which provide "simple, authoritative, aggregated view of a brand's activity across Twitter making it easy for any user to discover and navigate the breadth of activity the brand has going on Twitter," according to Seesmic's press release. Seesmic's launch partners, which include Kodak, Red Bull, CNN Money, SOTS, and Time, will each have a brand channel on the application. The Huffington Post is also proud to be one of Seesmic Look's launch partners.

Find out more about Seesmic Look here.

See screenshots of Seesmic Look below:

Comments

[BryanTheRegOps]

10:09 AM on 01/22/2010

I downloaded it last night and played with it for a while and I have to admit it looks amazing, but I don't think I'll be using it as much. Its a bit slow and its very limited. The greatness of Twitter its the simplicity. This makes it a bit more complicated with all its option. I still prefer UberTwitter on my Blackberry.

[wethree]

04:56 PM on 01/21/2010

How many articles in the past 6-months have claimed that TWITTER ALREADY IS IN THE MAINSTREAM?

(whether true or not is debatable; but, that's not the issue).

The issue is: buying into someone's press release about how they are taking taking a product someplace it already has claimed to be -- and, not calling BS on them -- or, on someone?

Dumbing-down an App in hopes of attracting non-tech/social-media/self-promoters (eg the "mainstream)? And, believing they will download this App (it requires a download), then they will remember to use it? Never mind it's optimized for Windows 7 which is not YET mainstream? When, you can get the same experience on any web page through TWITTER'S APIs and a bit of html and Flash on any OS?

Most tech/media businesses use the phrase, when describing the value of TWITTER, as: "It's good for a Press Release."

And, if you give away your Branded App to HP for free, I guess you get your Press Release reprinted without question?

#transparency

[lightnessandjoy]

04:47 PM on 01/21/2010

Twitter - Lots More Junk For Cluttered Lives.

[calif0rnIan]

03:49 PM on 01/21/2010

As a user of OS X myself I found it rather sad that there is no release for the Mac or GNU/Linux.
I tried out Seesmic Look and think it's a rather great product for the "non power user!".

It's important that people still keep transparency and authenticity in focus here rather than marketing.
Being that word of mouth is now on steroids I think my statement stands rather well.

Now with those having issues with it crashing and being unstable, I have not had any issues so far other than the application "hanging itself" once while scrolling like a maniac. It recovered from the crash, or hick up rather, and no issues as of yet.

Although myself a power user of twitter, I honestly see no real potential of using Seesmic Look.
But, for the mainstream crowd, it might just be what they need to get on the social media train of 2010.

Ian

[fcsakes]

12:06 PM on 01/21/2010

In my family, and I'm a mom and a grandmother, I am the only one who has more than a basic familiarity with the computer and all the cr*p you can do with it . They call ME for advice, not the other way around. Watch the patronization.

They don't call me "surly" for nothing. Nuttin Honey.

[tskaggs]

11:16 AM on 01/21/2010

I agree Tavalai. Here are my concerns..
The application is Windows only… I’m a OS X fanboy, so I won’t be using it very often. The interface is too flashy and load time is slow, and there is no advanced trend options. Lastly, the launch and app seems like a very large branding commercial for Microsoft and all the people on the “channel” area on the application.

It's nice that Seesmic trying to bring Twitter to the mainstream but I don't see that happening. Not many people will understand the reason for Tweeting just because the words are bigger and the background is transparent....

http://timskaggs.net/blog/2010/01/seesmic-seesmiclook-impressions/

[Tavallai]

10:46 AM on 01/21/2010

Ugh. Loïc the Sarkozyiste with another app reinforcing the oh-so-French idea that people like stuff "curated" for them. Apps like Seesmic Look will over-organize and help kill the free spirit of the Internet.