12seconds.tv is to video, what twitter’s 140 characters is to the written note.
Today, 12seconds.tv reveals its newest feature – the 12omercial – a 12-second video feature that can be linked to Web sites or contact information such as your Twitter or Facebook accounts. This in itself isn’t too unique. One can already tweet their 12seconds video, and people already send links to each other. In addition, now all 12seconds.tv videos track viewing statistics.
What’s unique with this morning’s new release is the partnership that 12seconds.tv has made with LG and its Versa phone. LG has a branded page from which they invite the 12seconds community to create short bits about their new mobile phone.
For LG, it’s free advertising, the opportunity to scout talent and even come up with creative marketing campaigns on a minimal budget. LG can repurpose the videos for a full-blown or viral ad campaign. Through this partnership, LG is also exciting and engaging its product owners.
YouTube and Seesmic both offer the ability to record your own video, but no company has invited the public to submit their own content, and add it to a live feed that can also be 
syndicated to blogs, Facebook, Twitter and beyond.
The real challenge to LG and other brands who participate in this live stream conversation will be how companies respond to complaints and other negative or inappropriate content. Will a company respond to a complaint with it’s own 12second clip, attempt to censor the content, or lead the conversation offline? Will a customer service representative respond to you? Will busy execs sometimes be expected to respond on camera themselves?
These are just a few things to consider when entering the next social media territory. The advantages of being a first-mover company is undoubtedly strong, but only when done with careful strategy. The consequences of failed public relations via this new medium, however, have the potential to be exponentially damaging.
We’ll keep a close observation on the LG and 12omerical campaign.
12seconds.tv itself has great potential. The creators of Tweetdeck must also think so since 12seconds.tv has been a feature there for a little while now. It’ll be interesting to see how the likes of Seesmic (which is integrated with Twhirl) and YouTube compete in this crowd-sourced marketing arena.
The next step for 12seconds.tv… First to come out of beta, and then perhaps a 12seconds iPhone app on a future model with video capability? Let’s hope so!
Our overview of different video/multimedia sharing options and its uses in social media applications are coming up in the next week, but I wanted to take a diversion today to review 12omercial as it debuted.
Mozilla’s Fennec doesn’t exist for my mobile device of choice yet, (iPhone) but this video preview of the new mobile browser looks promising!
What I like from the preview video:
So what is a Fennec? According to Wikipedia, a Fennec is a small nocturnal fox found in the Sahara Desert of North Africa which has distinctive very large ears.
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I’m passing a favor forward. I have four invites for the private beta of Aardvark, which is a new social answer-sourcing tool. Leave me a comment or send me a message with your email if you want one.
So what is Aardvark?
It’s an IM client from which you can ask a specific question like “What’s a good easy bike path in Irvine, CA for a beginning cyclist?” And it’ll send the query to others who claim to be experts in cycling nearby.
Unlike Twitter, your question is broadcast to those mostly likely able to answer your question. Likewise, you’ll get sent questions that you’re most likely knowledgeable about based upon your Aardvark profile. You can control how many questions are sent to you and how often, so you only participate as much or as little as you want to.
Since it’s still in private beta, there isn’t a critical mass yet to get quick enough responses. (It took about 20 minutes to get an answer to the question above.) And I have a wishlist of features including:
According to Read Write Web (@rww), Aardvark was developed by The Mechanical Zoo, a San Francisco-based company that raised $5.25 million from August Capital and Baseline Ventures last October.
Read moreSaw this Public Service Announcements on TV this weekend. An important message – for all ages. I’m surprised this hasn’t been done before.
But then again, I’m not in the targeted age-group, nor do I watch much TV. And with TiVo, even less commercials…
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Exciting news! From the folks at Creative Commons comes an announcement that you can now CC-license your tweets via TweetCC!
It’s simple, just send one of the following tweets to @tweetcc, depending on which CC license you’d like to use (click on the link for an instant tweet):
CC Zero Waiver: @tweetcc: I dedicate my tweets to The Commons by waiving all copyrights under CC Zero Waiver http://icnhz.com/cc-0
Attribution: @tweetcc: I license tweets under CC Attribution http://icnhz.com/cc-by
Attribution Share Alike: @tweetcc: I license tweets under CC Attribution Share Alike http://icnhz.com/cc-by-sa
Attribution, No Derivatives: @tweetcc: I license tweets under CC Attribution No Derivatives http://icnhz.com/cc-by-nd
Attribution Non-Commercial: @tweetcc: I license tweets under CC Attribution Non-Commercial http://icnhz.com/cc-by-nc
Attribution Non-Commercial Share Alike: @tweetcc: I license tweets under CC Attribution Non-Commercial Share Alike http://icnhz.com/cc-by-nc-sa
Attribution Non-Commercial No Derivatives: @tweetcc: I license tweets under CC Attribution Non-Commercial No Derivatives http://icnhz.com/cc-by-nc-nd
Even cooler is they don’t ask for your password:
We don’t ask for your Twitter login or password as this password anti-pattern practice teaches people how to be phished. Don’t scatter your passwords around like chicken feed.
Join the founders of TweetCC – @malarkey and @briansuda – and some 1,300 other tweeters who have already licensed their tweets!
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