I listened to most of the New York presentation for Seesmic Look this morning.  Let me get one thing off my chest right away… Who decided to broadcast the unveiling during peak West Coast work commute times?  I am sure this was rather disheartening to the minor population of social media users behind the wheel in the tiny, non-technical and relatively unpowerful hamlets of Los Angeles, San Diego, San Francisco, Portland, and Seattle.

I’ll stop sucking on the sour grapes, but it’s been 5 hours since the video was launched via live stream from Seesmic’s website, and I’m still looking for a rebroadcast of it somewhere.   I look forward to another chance to see what Loic has to say about his team’s new product…

I have downloaded Look and have run it through its paces, and until the video is made available, I’ll simply focus on the mechanics of the interface.

The download is pretty quick from Seesmic’s servers, and is a desktop client, to be installed on your machine.  After an easy install I started things up, and used my Twitter account information in the login boxes at top of the intro screen.

Right off the bat, I saw a pretty menu on the left-hand side, my avatar atop, and a cool, dreamy bubbly effect going on, as trending topics melted in and out of view, calling silently to me to click on one…

Navigation

Look has an integrated back-arrow that appears as you move through the nested menus.  Choose something from the menu, and the sub-menu appears with the changed interface, along with the arrow to navigate you back where you started.  Looks and operates very smoothly..

The middle of the screen transitions depending on where you are in the interface, and the very right-hand side is reserved for commonly-used twitter functions such as profile viewing, replying, direct messaging, retweeting and favorite-ing.  There is also a button to view a user’s tweet stream, something you typically see in a profile view.

Trends

The default view after login is the Trends section, which displays an additional sub-menu for trending topics on Twitter now, for the day as a whole, and for the week in general.  Very pretty blue bubbles fade in, and the trending topics form on the screen (see image left.)

Click on a topic topic box, and it will show you a timeline of tweets now on it (see image above.)  You can easily scroll through them, and the boxes are very big and very easy to read; however you are limited to only 3 – 4 tweets at a time, depending on screen resolution.  (I can resolve about 5-6 with my 23″ screens by stretching out to full-screen.) To reply or retweet, click on a showcased tweet and use the icon menu on the right.

Inbox

The next choice is the Twitter message Inbox, where you can see all of the @replies you received on Twitter, in the same very pretty manner.  I do see an issue with only having just over 2 tweets show up, and believe Look should have a slider available to let you scale down the size of the tweet boxes, so you can see more of them at one time.  Seesmic founder Loic Le Meur said he wanted to create an interface his mother could use, but the huge boxes seem to me to be the social media equivalent of shouting at Grandma so she can hear…

Again, to respond, choose a tweet box and use the Twitter-like menu icons on the right-hand side.  Left-hand sub-menus allow you to move on to direct messages and sent items (public Twitter replies.)

When retweeting, the newer (and controversial) non-commenting retweet function of Twitter is replicated by Look.  So when you highlight a tweet to share with your followers and choose to retweet, you will see a new box with the tweet, and a confirmation to retweet it, but no ability to add your own commentary.  This feature is almost universally worked around in Twitter clients, and I do hope Look fixes their limited retweet function as well…

Social

The social link puts your friends stream front and center, alongside a sub-menu for your lists.  this is kind of nice, as you can jump around quite easily.

This feature in itself makes the lists feature a bit more fun to use than in Twitter itself.  The giant tweets tend to overlay the names of the lists, however, an issue that needs to be fixed soon…

As with other screens, click on a list to see tweets from them, and the Twitter icon menus are on the right-hand side.

The A-Z and Playback (TV) buttons

The default method of seeing tweets in your stream is the Timeline view, which is represented at the top of your stream by the little clock icon, and provides tweets in a chronological order.  Swap over to the A-Z view, and it will show you tweets in your stream based on alphabetizing by username.  Playback mode gives you the cool and dreamy (not in my opinion not overly useful) bubbling effect of tweets coming in.  I will likely stick to the default Timeline view…

Profiles

To see the profile of anyone on your screen, simply click on their latest tweet and choose the profile icon on the right-hand side.  It’s the top one (you have to put your mouse over them to see what the icons are for.)

The profile shows up in a pretty box, showing their Twitter avatar, name, username, website, biography, how many followers they have and how many are following them.  There is a follow/unfollow button, and a place where you can favorite them or add to a Twitter list.

Where this falls short from Twitter is the ability to click and see just WHO they are following are are being followed by.  In fact, there is no “jump to their Twitter profile” button anywhere in the Look profile section.  I have to leave Look to find that sort of information out, which is disappointing.  Don’t make me leave your interface, because it makes me feel a twinge of guilt…

Another way to see a tweeter’s profile, is to simply click on their avatar in the stream.  This will take you to a view in Look that includes both their latest stream of commentary and customized Twitter background.  It is a pretty view, and you get to see around 4 tweets at a time without scrolling (I got 7 with maximum screen resolution.)

Favorites

One nice (and eminently usable) feature is the ability to save not only favorite tweets, but also favorite people, so you can easily return and sneak peeks at the streams of your favorite follow.  This ability shows up when you are looking at a tweeter’s profile using either profile view method.  Viewing your favorite people is under the Favorites menu, where you also get to view your saved Favorite tweets.

You are only allowed to view one favorite person’s twitter stream at a time.  If you want to see all in a group, then simply add them to a list and view the list’s stream, same as on Twitter.

Interests

Ah, we are getting to something very interesting and unique to Look.  It’s the Interests section.  Click on the link, and you will be provided 14 different categories of topics, including News, Entertainment, Business and Technology.  Click on any of these topics, and a live stream shows up with tweets related to it.

I chose Technology as a sub-menu item, and received yet another sub-menu, with 28 different larger providers of technology information on Twitter.  I’m unsure as to the method used to choose them, but they are certainly desirable providers…  By default you get all technology-related providers’ tweets, but you can choose a single provider by clicking on it.  I chose the Huffington Post Tech, and am including a screenshot for you of the tweets.

Channels

Another feature of Look is the development of channels by major providers of content.  Read here – Branding.  Again, I am unsure as to the method Seesmic used to choose who gets into the interface.

Out of the variety of Twitter-based content providers on Look, I chose to sneak a glance at the Life Channel, and got the @Life stream, same as it shows up on Twitter, replete with their background.  You can also choose their celebrity, animals, sports, travel or news streams to view.

Channels is not as unique a feature as the Interests section, as I can always visit @Life on Twitter whenever I want and see the same thing, but we’ll see who this develops over time.  I have a feeling most brands will work within Twitter and Facebook for their needs, and allow clients like Look to just pick up and use their feeds if desired.

Searches

The final link allows you to perform searches on Twitter using Look.  Type in the box labelled Search at the top right of the interface, and click on the search button that magically appears.  I chose to type in the name of this blog, Dopodomani.  Go ahead and say it, I’m vain…  I know.

The results show up in a Twitter stream, as we are used to seeing in other applications and clients.  Unfortunately, you are not given the option to save your search, which would’ve been nice to have, and is widely available in other clients.  I often perform the same searches over and over, so could we have this soon?

First-shot assessment

Seesmic Look has billed as a Twitter tool for those who are not “Power Users,” to provide a simpler, prettier interface for the more casual social media individual.  At first glance, Look merely hints at what the user should do next, without actual instruction on the screen.  I had to feel my way through Look by actually clicking around the interface, which is how a “power user” tends to get around in new digs.  Although Look’s environment is rich and beautiful (and shows a great deal of promise,) I am left wondering if this truly is an easier environment for the casual user than Twitter itself.

I do hope this takes off for Seesmic, and provides a first-step for casual users.  I also hope it brings many times more users to the Twitter environment.  I love the people I meet, and hope to be able to interface with many, many more.  I don’t think I’ll be using Look very often (as it was not designed to help me,) but I do think that I should be giving Seesmic Desktop another glance or two soon…

Steve Woods

@_stevewoods