Seesmic was a suite of

freeware Freeware is software, often proprietary, that is distributed at no monetary cost to the end user. There is no agreed-upon set of rights, license, or EULA that defines ''freeware'' unambiguously; every publisher defines its own rules for the free ...

web Web most often refers to: * Spider web, a silken structure created by the animal * World Wide Web or the Web, an Internet-based hypertext system Web, WEB, or the Web may also refer to: Computing * WEB, a literate programming system created by ...

, mobile, and

desktop A desktop traditionally refers to: * The surface of a desk (often to distinguish office appliances that fit on a desk, such as photocopiers and printers, from larger equipment covering its own area on the floor) Desktop may refer to various compu ...

applications Application may refer to: Mathematics and computing * Application software, computer software designed to help the user to perform specific tasks ** Application layer, an abstraction layer that specifies protocols and interface methods used in a ...

which allowed users to simultaneously manage

user account A user is a person who uses a computer or network service. A user often has a user account and is identified to the system by a username (or user name). Some software products provide services to other systems and have no direct end use ...

s for multiple

social network A social network is a social structure consisting of a set of social actors (such as individuals or organizations), networks of Dyad (sociology), dyadic ties, and other Social relation, social interactions between actors. The social network per ...

s, such as

Facebook Facebook is a social media and social networking service owned by the American technology conglomerate Meta Platforms, Meta. Created in 2004 by Mark Zuckerberg with four other Harvard College students and roommates, Eduardo Saverin, Andre ...

and

Twitter Twitter, officially known as X since 2023, is an American microblogging and social networking service. It is one of the world's largest social media platforms and one of the most-visited websites. Users can share short text messages, image ...

. Launched in 2008 by French entrepreneur Loïc Le Meur, the service was initially a video sharing website, billed as a cross between YouTube and Twitter, allowing short video comments to be published online. Le Meur shut down the service in 2009 due to its stagnating user base, and then relaunched Seesmic as a social networking tool, with a suite of desktop, mobile and web apps integrating streams from Twitter, Facebook and other social media sites. Following the failure to monetize the company, in 2011 Seesmic was relaunched yet again as a customer relations management app.

History

Starting out life as a

video blogging A vlog (), also known as a video blog or video log, is a form of blog for which the medium is video. Vlog entries often combine embedded video (or a video link) with supporting text, images, and other metadata. Entries can be recorded in one ta ...

website, its original aim was to make video uploading from webcams easier to promote online video conversations. Seesmic made its debut at the Demo tech conference where it was called the "Twitter of video". It had 20,000 users and 70,000 viewers per month as of 2008. On 3 April 2008, Seesmic announced that it had purchased Twhirl, an

Adobe AIR Adobe AIR (also known as Adobe Integrated Runtime and codenamed Apollo) is a cross-platform runtime system currently developed by Harman International, in collaboration with Adobe Inc., for building desktop applications and mobile application ...

based

client. In 2009, Loïc Le Meur, Seesmic's founder, announced that the video portion of the site had stagnated as it struggled to attract new users. He refocused the site, changing the objective from creating a new video social networking site to creating a suite of tools that would instead aggregate content from other social networking sites such as Twitter and

. The video site, whilst remaining available, was relegated to a different

domain name In the Internet, a domain name is a string that identifies a realm of administrative autonomy, authority, or control. Domain names are often used to identify services provided through the Internet, such as websites, email services, and more. ...

. Le Meur moved from

Paris Paris () is the Capital city, capital and List of communes in France with over 20,000 inhabitants, largest city of France. With an estimated population of 2,048,472 residents in January 2025 in an area of more than , Paris is the List of ci ...

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to relaunch Seesmic due to the perception that it would stand a better chance of success there. It was backed by a number of investors, the primary one being Atomico, a venture group that includes Niklas Zennstrom and Janus Friis, who sold

Skype Skype () was a proprietary telecommunications application operated by Skype Technologies, a division of Microsoft, best known for IP-based videotelephony, videoconferencing and voice calls. It also had instant messaging, file transfer, ...

eBay eBay Inc. ( , often stylized as ebay) is an American multinational e-commerce company based in San Jose, California, that allows users to buy or view items via retail sales through online marketplaces and websites in 190 markets worldwide. ...

in 2005 for $2.6 billion. In January 2010 Seesmic acquired Ping.fm.Pinging In The New Year: Seesmic Acquires Ping.fm
TechCrunch (4 January 2010). Retrieved on 2013-09-21. In March 2010, Seesmic reached 1 million registered users. Seesmic produced a number of social network clients including: * Seesmic Desktop – a cross platform Twitter and

desktop client written using

. Version 2 was rewritten in

Microsoft Silverlight Microsoft Silverlight is a discontinued application framework designed for writing and running rich internet applications, similar to Adobe Inc., Adobe's Run time environment, runtime, Adobe Flash. While early versions of Silverlight focused on ...

and added support for

Google Buzz Google Buzz was a social networking, microblogging and messaging tool developed by Google. It replaced Google Wave and was integrated into their web-based email program, Gmail. Users could share links, photos, videos, status messages and comm ...

. * Seesmic Web – a Twitter

web application A web application (or web app) is application software that is created with web technologies and runs via a web browser. Web applications emerged during the late 1990s and allowed for the server to dynamically build a response to the request, ...

client for Twitter written using

Google Web Toolkit Google Web Toolkit (GWT ), or GWT Web Toolkit, is an open-source software, open-source set of Programming tool, tools that allows web developers to create and maintain JavaScript Front and back ends, front-end applications in Java (programming ...

* Seesmic for Android – a native Twitter client, Facebook, and Salesforce Chatter client for Android * Seesmic for

Windows Phone 7 Windows Phone 7 (WP7) is the first release of the Windows Phone mobile client operating system, released worldwide on October 21, 2010, and in the United States on November 8, 2010. It runs on the Windows CE 6.0 kernel. It serves as the successo ...

– a native Twitter, Facebook, and Salesforce Chatter client for Windows Phone 7 * Seesmic for

iPhone The iPhone is a line of smartphones developed and marketed by Apple that run iOS, the company's own mobile operating system. The first-generation iPhone was announced by then–Apple CEO and co-founder Steve Jobs on January 9, 2007, at ...

– a native Twitter, Facebook and Ping.fm client for iPhone and

iPod Touch The iPod Touch (stylized as iPod touch) is a discontinued line of iOS-based mobile devices designed and formerly marketed by Apple Inc. with a touchscreen-controlled user interface. As with other iPod models, the iPod Touch can be used as a po ...

* Seesmic for

BlackBerry BlackBerry is a discontinued brand of handheld devices and related mobile services, originally developed and maintained by the Canadian company Research In Motion (RIM, later known as BlackBerry Limited) until 2016. The first BlackBerry device ...

– a native Twitter client for BlackBerry – discontinued in June 2011 In August 2011, Seesmic announced it was moving into the Customer Relations Management business, releasing Android and

iOS Ios, Io or Nio (, ; ; locally Nios, Νιός) is a Greek island in the Cyclades group in the Aegean Sea. Ios is a hilly island with cliffs down to the sea on most sides. It is situated halfway between Naxos and Santorini. It is about long an ...

CRM apps that interfaced with

Salesforce.com Salesforce, Inc. is an American cloud-based software company headquartered in San Francisco, California. It provides applications focused on sales, customer service, marketing automation, e-commerce, analytics, artificial intelligence, and appl ...

. The former social media apps were being maintained as a "second branch" of the company. In September 2012, Seesmic was acquired by

HootSuite Hootsuite is a Online presence management, social media management platform, created by Ryan Holmes in 2008. The system's user interface takes the form of a dashboard (web administration), dashboard, and supports social network integrations for T ...

.Seesmic has been acquired by HootSuite
– Seesmic Blog, 6 September 2012

References

{{Aggregators Blog software Software companies established in 2008 Twitter services and applications Discontinued software 2008 establishments in France Software companies based in the San Francisco Bay Area Software companies disestablished in 2012 2012 disestablishments in California Defunct companies based in the San Francisco Bay Area 2012 mergers and acquisitions Defunct social networking services