12seconds extends its 15 minutes of fame with an API

Venture Beat — Thu, 21 Aug 2008 08:00:21 -0700

12seconds has a goal: It wants to be the go-to platform for video status updates. In order to make a good platform, you need a good application programming interface (API). Today, 12seconds is launching that API and announcing its first three partners.

TweetDeck, an Adobe Air client for services including Twitter, Blippr, a site that does short-form reviews, and Phreadz, a startup that does threaded video conversations, are the first three partners to use the 12seconds API. But the company is eager for more partners and is encouraging anyone to play around with the code.

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Despite 12seconds’ lofty goals, it’s still easiest to describe it as a video version of the micro-messaging site Twitter. Many think of the video conversation site Seesmic as that, but on Seesmic videos can be fairly lengthy. On 12seconds, just as on Twitter, there are very short limits for how much you can say on video and in text respectively. In my opinion, this 12 second limit leads to some interesting, yet disposable videos.

12seconds has been having some fun with this limit as well. It recently launched the 12second challenge, where everyday a question or task is posed and users respond in a video. Today’s challenge, for example, asks users to sing their favorite songs when they were 13 years old. All of the response are then compiled on a single page.

It’s lightweight fun, but that’s what 12second is all about right now. Whether this API can transform it into a platform remains to be seen.

Find the API here.

Below: What 12seconds will look like integrated into TweetDeck.