Awesome 12mail Video Messenger for iPhone, Works with Twitter and Facebook

Andy Warhol is perhaps most well known for uttering those infamous words, “In the future, everyone will be world-famous for 15 minutes.” Ironically, that only took Andy about 12 seconds to say. Nevertheless, his point was made. Humans were progressively losing their attention spans, consuming bite size chunks of media like news and video before spitting them out for the next person.

This effect is no more evident than in our current obsession with social networking, and more specifically, micro-blogging. Take a look at Twitter, that quirky, simpleton of a text messaging service that has taken the world by storm. Its genius can be found, not in its breadth of features, but rather in its lack thereof. For most people, the barriers to use Twitter were set purposely low by its creators. Tweeters can quickly concoct tasty morsels of text and pass them to their followers who devour and share the messages just as fast. It’s like man versus food in a global tapas bar gone mad.

The micro-blogging feeding frenzy has been fueled, in large part, by mobile users who tap out status updates as if tomorrow was the end of the Maya calendar. And with the growing support for video on mobile phones like the iPhone, it only makes sense that video will offer the next bountiful course served up at the social network feast. Twitter has already stated publicly that they will not get into video, but instead leave that up to third-parties. So then, who will dominate this emerging landscape for video micro-blogging? Our countdown stops at 12seconds.tv, the creators of 12mail video messenger, the very first cross-platform video messaging service for iPhone.

The 12mail iPhone app showed up in the App Store last month. It sits on top of a “realtime media engine” which enables iPhone users to create short video updates that can be shared across multiple social networks including Twitter and Facebook. Much like Twitter’s 140 character limit on Tweets, 12mail limits videos to a maximum length of 12 seconds. Now, this might not seem like a long enough time for a video message, but it’s actually just right. When you think about it, not many people can create more than 12 seconds of compelling video content anyways. And our short attention spans cause us to tune out quickly when viewing online video. In fact, a recent study by TubeMogul confirms that, on average, humans tune out of online video between 10 and 20 seconds because most videos get too boring after that.

The time limitation in 12mail actually lowers the barrier for most people who create video messages. You don’t have to worry about filling up a lot of time with interesting content, and it forces you to get right to the point. There’s already a lot of choices out there for people who want to make longer videos, but that’s obviously not 12mail’s value. 12mail is not about making movies, it’s about sharing a moment, and sharing them with video using the existing social networks you already have on Facebook and Twitter.

Short videos also mean faster upload and download times for greater convenience. You can quickly grab a video and share it with your friends, or send them as direct messages. This is all done within the 12mail app itself, including the video capture, which means you don’t have to pop out between apps in order to share them.

Using 12mail couldn’t be much easier. Once the app is open, you select your network you want to share the video with, Facebook, Twitter, or both. To create a new message, enter the title then select “record” to start capturing video, or you can select an existing video from your library. If you choose a video from your library, the app will take the first 12 seconds of your video, or you can trim out the clip you want to share by using the iPhone’s built-in video editor. Once you have your video and title, you can also choose to tag your video with multiple keywords to categorize it, or even geo-tag it with your current location. When you’re message is all set, you tap send and off it goes to be shared with your Facebook or Twitter friends.

Users that don’t own iPhones with video (older than 3GS) can still use 12mail to share photos with audio. You open 12mail, take a new photo or select one from your library, then record a 12 second audio clip over it. Like the video, these 12mail sound photos can be shared with your Facebook or Twitter networks. It’s the next best thing to video and it works just as well as the 12mail app does for video. Simple and fun.

Mobile video is a huge emerging market creating vast potential for companies who enable and enhance the sharing of video in social networks. The creators of 12mail are hoping that their video platform will become the standard platform for video messaging and from the looks of it, they are well on their way. The platform extends well beyond iPhone by providing web access to all your online video messages created by you or your friends.

You can access your 12mail videos on the 12seconds.tv web site although you are not required to sign up for an account in order to use the 12mail iPhone app. However, we recommend that you do get yourself signed up for 12seconds.tv, then enable the Twitter and Facebook integration in the settings menu. This way, you can view and manage all your 12mail videos while benefiting from the other great features that the web site offers. The 12seconds.tv web site also has its own easy to use tools for recording and sharing your messages right from your computer’s webcam.

12seconds.tv combines cross platform compatibility with a video quality that is reliable across web and mobile. This creates a service for back-and-forth video messaging, a feature that is completely absent from YouTube and other online video sharing sites. 12mail is also far superior to MMS which costs money and produces varied results. 12mail is free, easy, and it streams so there’s no waiting for downloads before viewing the video.

Add to this the 12mail iPhone app to extend video messaging from anywhere, and you suddenly see the potential here. Apple’s decision to include video capture in the new iPod nano is a clear indication of how important this market is. Last month, Steve Jobs introduced the new iPod nano by saying, “Video is exploding in popularity, we want a piece of that.”

12seconds.tv is seeing their user base grow rapidly, much of it sparked by 12mail users on iPhone, otherwise referred to as “12ers”. A growing cadre of celebrities like Bill Cosby, Kevin Pollack, and Dane Cook have shared video messages here. Pro athletes Shaqille O’Neil and Shawne Merriman are also among the celebrity 12er community. Even indie musician Imogen Heap is a 12er using the service to preview new music and get feedback from fans.

And as you’d expect, where there are people you will also find advertisers. This is good news for the founders of 12seconds.tv who subsidize their free service through sponsorships. Some big brands have already hopped on the sponsorship bandwagon while others are using the service to reach customers in other creative ways. A few these companies include M&Ms, Mountain Dew, Addidas, Starbucks, Kodak, Xbox Live, and General Motors. Coming out of the gate with heavy hitters like these on board is a pretty clear indicator of great things down the road for 12seconds.tv.

• 12mail video messenger – Free [app store]
• 12seconds.tv – Free [web]

 

Add a comment (2 so far)