12seconds -- The Video Twitter (invites)

They call themselves the "Video Twitter" -- their name is 12seconds. The idea is that you can create video from your computer or mobile in 12 seconds and upload it to their site and share it with your friends. VentureBeat and NewTeeVee were able to get into the private alpha version last month.

Today 12seconds moves into public alpha (which still requires an invite??). Some of the new features launching today include a friend search, the ability to send your 12seconds videos to Twitter and a "channel" function which will play videos back-to-back.

Many will compare 12seconds to Seesmic but there really is no comparison. Seesmic is a video message board while 12seconds hopes to be a quick hit and share platform.

I spoke with co-founder David Speiser who explained that the team is bootstrapping it currently but they are looking to raise funding. The founders even bartered items from their homes to help get things the developers were looking for. We also spoke about the fail whale and Speiser noted that they have spent time researching why Twitter has had so many scaling issues in the hopes of not repeating the issues with 12seconds.

Update: Jonathan Fields says: Isn't that just Utterz with a timecap?

We've got a bunch of invites, complete this form to grab one.

Here's an example video from 12seconds from famous video blogger Veronica Belmont:

Why 12? on 12seconds.tv