12seconds Archive

12Seconds calls themselves the, “Video Twitter” and basically what they offer is a service which allows you to record videos with a maximium length of 12 seconds. The videos can be shared and commented on by your friends. The service has grown in popularity since their launch back in July. In our initial 12seconds review, we looked at the comparison to Seesmic.

Today the company is releasing a new iPhone application which brings semi-video to the iPhone. Basically what you do is take three photos of a scene, add up to 12 seconds of audio and then the 12seconds application merges both together and creates a nice movie with photo transitions and sound.

The application is priced at $0.99 and the company believes they have created something innovative since Apple has blocked the ability to record video on the iPhone.

The other big announcement 12seconds is making today is that the site is now open to everyone and has moved from alpha stage to beta stage (whatever that means!).

Here’s a video demo of how the 12seconds semi-video, slideshow application works:

Election night in the U.S. is less than a week away and Web startups are all jockeying for position in an attempt to get traffic and more importantly new users. Today we’ve learned that 12seconds, Current TV and Flixwagon have partnered together on election coverage.

Here’s how it will work… live mobile video will be captured on Flixwagon. Assuming you are a 12seconds user, the first 12 seconds of the Flixwagon video will be sent to your 12seconds account. Current TV will receive a feed of all election-related videos on 12seconds and pick the best ones for broadcast.

It’s interesting to see how many distribution and discovery deals 12seconds is signing. I can only wonder if Seesmic is planning something for election night.

Adam Ostrow is reporting that Current TV is partnering with Digg and Twitter for election night coverage as well.

Video hosting service Viddler has announced the launch of a new service today, 15s. The idea behind 15s is to create videos using a webcam of 15 seconds or less. The videos are then instantly sent to your Twitter buddy list. The videos also appear in your Viddler video stream. Assuming this service becomes popular, it might be good for Viddler to allow a split between regular videos and these new 15s videos. Viddler evangelist Colin Devroe tells me that this is the 1.0 version and more enhancements are on the way.

This new Viddler service is direct competition for recently launched 12seconds. If they add text and video comments, it could be strong competition for Seesmic. Earlier this year, Seesmic followed Viddler into the video blog commenting space.

Viddler recently launched a fully-customizable player and Viddler Vidgets. Here’s an example of a 15s video from RandomSarah:

Update: Sarah had no idea how she would use 15s an hour ago and now she is addicted to it:

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: