12seconds: A video Twitter?
by Imran Ali
A few days ago I received a Twitter from my friend Katie, linking to a twelve-second video of her applying some lipstick. This was my first experience of 12seconds,the recently launched Santa Cruz based startup being heralded as the video of Twitter.
Though other services such as Seesmic have sought to emulate the intimacy and immediacy of Twitter in video form, Seesmic always seemed a little too rich and required too much of a user’s attention, in comparison with the simplicity, sparsity and elegance of Twitter.
As its name suggests, 12seconds limits user’s video messages to a couple dozen seconds, encouraging the same charm, inventiveness and brevity that we see in 140-character Twitters. Where Twitter’s limitation was semi-imposed by the limitations of its medium of choice - the SMS - 12seconds’ limit is an arbitrary boundary cheekily described by the service’s creators as ‘an upper boundary for boredom‘…
The scientists here at the 12seconds dodecaplex have conducted countless hours of research to determine the precise amount of time it takes for boredom or apathy to set in during typical Internet video viewing. Our patent pending Electro-Tear-Duct Prongers have determined that exactly 12 seconds of video is the ideal amount of time to keep anything interesting.
However, 12seconds’ limit may actually position the service ideally for mobility. Squeezing twelve seconds of video from a mobile handset’s forward-facing camera into an MMS is probably quite feasible technically, compatible with most handsets - and as a user experience - recieving a few dozen twelve second video messages is no more distracting than hundreds of Twitters!
It’ll be interesting to see if 12seconds recognises it’s mobile opportunity and whether users take to it as they took to Twitter and its rivals.
For me, receiving Katie’s message invoked a similar emotional response as when I first started to use Twitter - voyeuristic and intimate, potentially distracting, but open to many possibilities and user-created innovations.
12second’s is currently in a closed beta public alpha period…here’s hoping for an invite 
UPDATE: I just received an invitation to the public alpha and it seems that mobile users can submit videso by emailing an attached clip or emailing an MMS clip…here’s my first pixellated attempt!
