The last couple of days could not have been better for Loic Le Meur and Seesmic as the company had managed to secure a number of huge Hollywood Stars to be interviews using the Seesmic platform. The idea was for a couple of London based Seesmic users to set up the equipment on location in Cannes and send the feeds back to the US ready for the big press anouncment to follow.
If you have being following the Seesmic story then you will know that Loic Le Meur decided to use VC money not only as a way to fund the project but also as a way to build contacts who can strategically help Seesmic roll out its platform and take advantage of well forged relationships. One of the investors was Michael Arrington owner of Techcrunch who has written plenty of positive material about Seesmic on a number of occasions but yesterday he decided to make a post not only denouncing the company but ruining the opportunity for them to promote the Indiana Jones Actors coup.
The story ran with the title Don’t Screw Your Partners Over A Marketing Promotion which makes it sound like it was very sinister but the truth is was all down to a rogue Wordpress plug-in because of its bad design took out 3 of Michael Arrington’s sites for a very short period.
When I first read the story I could not understand why Michael Arrington would make such an aggressive move on a company he invests knowing that the publicity generated by having Harrison Ford is worth a small fortune to any company. It has also lead to a number of Techcrunch users attacking the Seesmic platform calling it nothing more than Loic’s plaything and one is even suggesting hes deported back to France!
I am not a massive Seesmic user but I do see its value not only to the public but as an application for business use. I also think that Loic’s passionate approach to the product will see it do very well and by integrating the product into as many apps as possible I think it will easily build a huge user base which is what is key for the product to suceed.
Take a look at Loic’s response here
Popularity: 72%
Leave a Reply