12seconds.tv and mobile lifestreaming?
Going mobile primetime by partnering with Qik and Flixwagon
I practically suggest in the title that 12seconds.tv is an hugely unprepared video network, and completely unsuited for the realms of mobile phone video.
The company is responsible for user-generated video content of a mere 12 seconds. Sounds ridiculous, right?
Well, not exactly. First of all, video messaging is starting to take root with sites like Seesmic, which calls itself the Twitter for video. And, Viddler launched a Web site called 15s.viddler.com.
People can create contests for the funniest 12-second clip. Or, if you're a news organization, you could use 12 seconds of video to tap into what's on the average citizen's mind.
12 challenge: BBC Have Your Say - Economic downturn - how bad can it get? Give some examples. on 12seconds.tv
12seconds.tv is now partnering with Qik.com and Flixwagon.com to get into mobile lifestreaming, according to RWW. The idea behind this “simple solution” that 12seconds.tv users can submit 12 seconds of their live recorded video to their 12seconds.tv account from recordings made using Qik.com and Flixwagon.
Sounds great. What benefit does this bring to all parties?
Firstly, we know that 12 seconds is possibly the shortest recording length you could possibly afford to get by on. However, it is helping to create discussion, opinion and some thoughtful insight amongst many of its users about current issues and topics. The addition of a mobile recording solution would provide a great way for users to create a spur of a moment 12 second video clip wherever they are.
Plus with it being intergrated into already widely adopted platform (Qik and Flixwagon), it provides a much wider net to collect new users in.
On the other hand, here is an example of the Qik.com client interface connecting to 12seconds.tv:
The words “simply not enough time” come to mind with that demonstration.
It shows the key features that Qik can so easily enable a user with are being incredibly restricted by a poor idea.
I believe personally that 12seconds.tv is all about making very creative videos in the shortest time possible. As I mentioned, it is a great tool to discuss with but in my opinion simply not good enough to be made use of in the Qik and Flixwagon clients.
What do you think?
Have Qik and Flixwagon made the right move, or is 12seconds.tv out of its depth with this move into mobile livestreaming?
(Image source: Jyesmith)
Related Companies, Investors, and Entrepreneurs
Seesmic
Startup/Business
Joined Vator on
People share their opinion on any topic in video. There is a social software layer, much like Twitter, to follow the conversation. Loic calls it the "CNN of my friends."
There are 2,000 videos posted per day with only 1,500 people subscribed to the stealth site.
Startup/Business
Joined Vator on
What is Twitter?
Twitter is an online information network that allows anyone with an account to post 140 character messages, called tweets. It is free to sign up. Users then follow other accounts which they are interested in, and view the tweets of everyone they follow in their "timeline." Most Twitter accounts are public, where one does not need to approve a request to follow, or need to follow back. This makes Twitter a powerful "one to many" broadcast platform where individuals, companies or organizations can reach millions of followers with a single message. Twitter is accessible from Twitter.com, our mobile website, SMS, our mobile apps for iPhone, Android, Blackberry, our iPad application, or 3rd party clients built by outside developers using our API. Twitter accounts can also be private, where the owner must approve follower requests.
Where did the idea for Twitter come from?
Twitter started as an internal project within the podcasting company Odeo. Jack Dorsey, and engineer, had long been interested in status updates. Jack developed the idea, along with Biz Stone, and the first prototype was built in two weeks in March 2006 and launched publicly in August of 2006. The service grew popular very quickly and it soon made sense for Twitter to move outside of Odea. In May 2007, Twitter Inc was founded.
How is Twitter built?
Our engineering team works with a web application framework called Ruby on Rails. We all work on Apple computers except for testing purposes.
We built Twitter using Ruby on Rails because it allows us to work quickly and easily--our team likes to deploy features and changes multiple times per day. Rails provides skeleton code frameworks so we don't have to re-invent the wheel every time we want to add something simple like a sign in form or a picture upload feature.
How do you make money from Twitter?
There are a few ways that Twitter makes money. We have licensing deals in place with Google, Yahoo!, and Microsoft's Bing to give them access to the "firehose" - a stream of tweets so that they can more easily incorporate those tweets into their search results.
In Summer 2010, we launched our Promoted Tweets product. Promoted Tweets are a special kind of tweet which appear at the top of search results within Twitter.com, if a company has bid on that keyword. Unlike search results in search engines, Promoted Tweets are normal tweets from a business, so they are as interactive as any other tweet - you can @reply, favorite or retweet a Promoted Tweet.
At the same time, we launched Promoted Trends, where companies can place a trend (clearly marked Promoted) within Twitter's Trending Topics. These are especially effective for upcoming launches, like a movie or album release.
Lastly, we started a Twitter account called @earlybird where we partner with other companies to provide users with a special, short-term deal. For example, we partnered with Virgin America for a special day of fares on Virginamerica.com that were only accessible through the link in the @earlybird tweet.
What's next for Twitter?
We continue to focus on building a product that provides value for users.
We're building Twitter, Inc into a successful, revenue-generating company that attracts world-class talent with an inspiring culture and attitude towards doing business.