At our Real-Time Stream CrunchUp in July, 12seconds previewed a new iPhone application to send video messages to your Twitter and Facebook followers. Today, the app, called 12mail Video Messenger, is finally live in the App Store.
To refresh your memory, basically, the app allows you to send short videos to your friends in the same way that you might send them text messages. Once you download the app, you simply input your Twitter or Facebook (or both) credentials and you have access to your contact lists from those services. From there, if you want to send a message to someone you’re connected with on Twitter, simply enter in their name, record the video (or use a pre-recorded one) and it will send them a direct message with a link to the video.
If you send a message to Facebook friends, it will post the video on their Wall. You can also mix and match contacts to send the videos to from within the app. And you can send the videos out publicly to all your Twitter followers. If your contacts also have the 12mail app, they can see the message right from within it on the iPhone. And it will send a Push Notification when new messages come in.
12mail is a big part of 12seconds’ new strategy to use existing social graphs (Twitter, Facebook) for its video platform, rather than trying to build out its own. That makes sense as obviously those are much, much larger than 12seconds.
Interestingly, the app will also work with non-3GS iPhone (meaning ones without video recording capabilities) but it becomes a dumbed-down version of the app. Users of 12seconds’ first iPhone app will remember that it involved still pictures and audio; this dumbed-down version is basically the same.
You can find the free app in the App Store here.
Also kind of humorous is Apple’s list of warnings for the app: “Frequent/Intense Sexual Content Or Nudity,” “Frequent/Intense Realistic Violence,” etc. Apple clearly loves the possibilities of video messaging!
Actually, the developer has to specify the “Frequent/Intense Realistic Violence” etc… when publishing the app. From there, Apple assigns the age rating.
Has anyone gotten this app to work on the Virtual iPhone yet?
I searched for it in the App Store but it doesn’t show up.
Direct appsto.re URL: http://appsto.re/12mail
The actual link is in the article:
http://itunes.a...999929&mt=8
Robo.to is 4 seconds. When will we see the 1 second video take off?
Long form -> short form -> form -> $_
Apple are clearly terrified of any form of UGC, or indeed of any content they haven’t created or explicitly vetted; witness the problems that ebook readers and so on have had.
That being the case, it’s astounding they ever dared put a web browser or YouTube app on the iPhone.
12seconds rocks. Kudos to the team and to my pal and cancer survivor David Beach
Holy buzzwords!
When will it be available on android?
Hah! Those warnings make it look like a porn app for serial killers or something. That might help downloads! It’s dangerous. “12mail – not suitable for people with heart conditions or those that are prone to sudden hairloss.”
It is a great app though (if I must confess). It gets really fun when your friends use it too. Sending video messages two and fro in realtime is awesome.
BTW: Thanks Grishaver. I appreciate the kind words.
12seconds’ strategy of using existing social graphs is a smart one but they should have changed their name to 120seconds long ago to make the service worth using.
Wow great news for iphone users to work together on facebook, twitter. Really impressive. Thanks
Good post. a new iPhone application to send video messages to your Twitter and Facebook followers