Seesmic as a video service was a failure. "Video conversation was too early, it did not grow beyond a great but small community and wasn't viable," explains Le Meur.
This new shift in focus also seems to suggest that Seesmic as social media software targeted at consumers may have missed the mark.
Given the bumps in the road, would Le Meur have done anything differently in hindsight? "No, never," he says, "I never look behind me, always ahead, focusing on what I should do different in the future."
The future is the enterprise, and failures and missteps aside, if Seesmic can find a way to effectively monetize its service and entice enterprise clientele to pay for upgrades, or attract enterprise partners to finance integration, then there's no reason why the startup can't make a fourth quarter comeback. Still, social software for the enterprise is a very crowded space, and the startup is bound to face obstacles -- IT departments restricting external downloads, for one -- as it traverses this road.
Le Meur does share that his company will likely raise more funding "shortly." "Many people are interested in what we do," he says. To date, the startup has pulled in $12 million in Series A and B rounds from noteworthy investors including Mark Pincus and Ron Conway.
We also pushed for specific stats on core metrics, but Le Meur would only share that the company is actively tracking registered users, new users, desktop and mobile apps downloads, and active daily users as its key metrics. For now, all we have to go on is his word that "revenue is coming soon and we are very happy about the growth."
Images courtesy of Flickr, loiclemeur, Romtomtom
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