Forgive us, great Ceiling Cat. We discovered the only way you can even attempt to introduce a service called Poodz is to use LOLspeak. And even then... we're totally fearing for our mortal souls.

Poodz (oh come on, stop giggling) is a microblogging service. Clear on that? Yeah, we weren't entirely sure what microblogging was either, but since a few of us here are pretty short, we decided to check it out..

Turns out there are no height restrictions with a microblog. Truth be told, we still don't really know what a microblog is as opposed to a plain ol' videoblog. That's what Poodz is, when it's all boiled down.

It's kind of a Twitter-esque, YouTubey, Facebook-infused service. It's kind of like Seesmic in a way. Well, actually, in a lot of ways. From country of origin to general functionality and concept it is, there's no denying, a lot like Seesmic.


Not to say that Poodz (or Seesmic, for that matter) are bad ideas, or that competition among platforms is bad either. We totally have to give credit where credit is due. The videos uploaded to blogs on Poodz are very watchable. By this we mean they're pretty good quality (content matter is of course subjective). It looks as though this is a service with a technically sound basis.

So why are we scratching our heads? We're not terribly sure, for one, what really sets Poodz apart. Embedded players are cool, the ability to email or MMS in posts, also cool... Still, we're just not entirely sure what would make one use Poodz over Seesmic. Or YouTube, even (picture quality aside).

Poodz is gearing up towards a more international release (beware: link leads to PDF). We're not sure, really, when. Or if it's officially happened already. The site, though reasonably well designed in terms of graphics and layout, is a bizarre mixture of French and English. The home page is entirely in English. Dig a little deeper (or try to sign up), and you'll be presented with what we used to call in high school, "Franglais." Headers are in English (and are way too cutesy... Wwwhat wwwere they thinking?). Content text is in French. Legal disclaimers/Terms of Use (you read those, right?) are in English. Sign up with (mostly) English input fields and options, and get this really cool French confirmation letter. Actually, you'll get a few of these cool letters from France.

We wouldn't imagine, really, this would be any less confusing for a native French speaker than a native English one. Terms of Use are hard enough for people who don't speak lawyer to comprehend.

Poodz might be right up your alley. Right now, though, we have to wonder what really differentiates it. It is a beta, but it would have been nice to see a little more cohesion in language presentation. We spent way too much time wondering what a "Poodz" actually was. Way too much time to determine we probably didn't want to know.

Neat idea? Eh, maybe. But it just seems to contribute to social network noise and clutter, without really adding anything truly exceptional.