Each week we will bring you a video recap of the week’s tech news and events by our newest employee Pete. Don’t worry, most of the time you won’t hear or see her - she will be working like the other blog interns out there. But sometimes we will sit down to get her opinions on the latest topics at hand. I’ve given her the goal of getting more views than Justine has this week. Should online brands be targeting young children now so they become loyal as they grow? Get the kid hooked and their parents will be hooked as well. Look at how Pete talks about YouTube - she can watch Elmo all day - I wa lucky to get a few minutes of Cookie and Ernie a day when I was little.

Today Pete discusses:

• Google’s potential acquisition of Digg
• YouTube - Elmo’s premiere with Neil Patrick Harris
• Twitter
• The Facebook platform
• iPhone applications

Now we need to get her to stop talking about Seesmic!

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Last week we wrote about the default strategy that FriendFeed currently employs. Today we are back with a video message board Seesmic testing a new default strategy. 

Earlier today, Seesmic community blogger Jeremy Vaught announced that when new users signup to Seesmic, they will automatically receive a set of followers which are considered defaults. The policy would allow Seesmic to setup all new users with the top 30 Seesmic users, as well as the Seesmic staff automatically. The "top 30" would be created by number of videos posted.  

Within minutes of the blog post going live, the Seesmic community reacted and reacted in a strong manner. Users responded both in text on the blog post along with videos on Seesmic. User Deek (video below) says he doesn’t want anyone to follow him unless they want to. Deek’s video is perfect - maybe other startups should watch it and see why defaults are such a bad idea.

CEO Loic LeMeur (a FriendFeed default) has turned off the default feature based on the community feedback. His video is also embedded below. It’s good to see him switch course based on feedback from the community. I can’t tell if the default strategy actually went into place and then removed or if it was just discussed as “coming soon”.

Here’s Deek’s video.

Here’s Loic’s responses - there’s no way to link to the thread but you can watch the thread in the video.

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Popular Twitter and FriendFeed client Twhirl is announcing a major update this evening. Twhirl has added Seesmic video messageboard functionality to the Adobe Air client. Today alone, Twhirl has been downloaded 400,000 times. This update including the Seesmic functionality should help Seesmic gain even more adoption and distribution. The Twhirl acquisition might just go down as one of the smartest of 2008.

This new version offers the ability to watch Seesmic videos. Owner Loic LeMeur (he actually owns both Seesmic and Twhirl) tells me that recording to Seesmic within Twhirl is coming soon. I’ve posted a screenshot below - I actually think following the video thread is easier on Twhirl than on Seesmic.

If you’d like the Twhirl version with Seesmic functionality, download it here. The auto-update won’t be available most likely until the Seesmic recording input is added.

To be honest, I’ve been using AlertThingy for FriendFeed and I still use Twitter on Twitter.com. AlertThingy basically dies after about 12 hours of being alive and it typically won’t restart unless I reboot. Twhirl is really slick and polished! I am going to test it further and will report back on my thoughts after a couple of weeks.

Loic also shared some brand new stats with me that Twhirl represents 12% of all the tweets being sent and 5% of all the Friendfeed comments and info shared.

Loic has big plans for Twhirl and calls it a "social client". He wants it to become the "Skype of social software".

Update: Here’s Loic speaking about the new update — you gotta watch this to see how he shows off the URL for downloads - hilarious!:

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Video hosting service Viddler is currently down and has been for the last 45 minutes or so (as of 8pm eastern). Viddler CEO Rob Sandie has been using Twitter to communicate with Viddler customers. It looks like most of the issue is around their content delivery network (CDN) Limelight. The latest update is:

Limelight says they had DOS attack, but they lost all power as well… not entirely sure.. but should be up soon

Follow SandieMan on Twitter for the latest service updates. To the best of my knowledge, this is the first time that Viddler has been down. 

We recently wrote a column explaining how important it is to have a status page/blog where users can visit to know what’s going on with outages and maintenance. Viddler just learned an important lesson - don’t host the status page/blog on the same servers as the main service!

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– Manage your finances online with Geezeo
– Web Jobs
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– Check out SmugMug for a free trial

Source:CenterNetworks

Video messageboard and now blog commenting service Seesmic has now taken up residence inside the Drupal content management system (CMS). Unfortunately it’s not a blog plugin like those fine folks using Wordpress have, it’s just an API module hook. So basically what this means is that you can tie Seesmic into other modules on Drupal but you can’t use this as a stand-alone module to add the Seesmic functionality. They note that the full video comment functionality is coming soon to Drupal. I will report back once I have a chance to test the full functionality.

I believe Viddler’s video comment system has a Drupal option but their servers are down so I can’t verify.

Check out our prior Seesmic coverage including our reasoning as to why Seesmic won’t work. Though I will admit that Loic has some amazing connections that could put the product over the top. I do notice that the Seesmic video comments plugin provides Seesmic with some really juicy SEO with the way the links are setup. This could help Seesmic gain ground in the all important video discovery arena.