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.