Until now, Twitvid has been a popular platform to share video clips while Tweeting. Through partnerships with Echofon and other apps, your mobile videos are shared across their network, including their own site and apps. With 12 million monthly unique visitors across the globe since they launched in 2009 — and a Twitter following north of 400k — they’ve grown impressively by leveraging how important real-time web video is to web video as a whole.
This morning, Twitvid has unleashed a brand new social video network that will allow anyone to become a powerful video programmer, by curating links from YouTube, Vimeo or Twitvid. Twitvid’s new, simple and easy to use interface and editorial tools are poised to allow web video watchers across every niche to become powerful, real-time programmers of web video.
With YouTube’s recent updates, it’s clear that web video platforms are trying to transcend beyond just having millions of pieces of content. The next wave of web video will be about users becoming curators and programmers. With Twitvid’s new social network, you can claim a new username that isn’t just your Twitter name (for example, I’m twatan on Twitter, but snagged natan on Twitvid) and then create channels — simply copy-and-paste-clips of videos — and build a following around them. You can also make it an open channel where anyone can share links, only you can share links, or the coolest part, where you can assign a team of editors that are allowed to contribute.
While getting an exclusive look at the new Twitvid, CEO Mo Adham described the need for their new network. “Your Twitter feed gets lost among pics and news. Engagement is low on video. You put it on your Facebook feed and everyone’s busy checking out their friends,” he explained. “The purpose of this network is about discovering video. When you get followers, when you share a video, you’ll get viewership and engagement on the video and people talking and watching the next episode.”
He also described why this tool is in no way supposed to be competing with YouTube or any other video platform. “It’s going to be a lot of curated content, web series. If you’re a video producer and make an episode each week and upload on blip.tv or YouTube, this is the place where you market that video, where you get followers and engage with those followers,” he described. “Sure you can upload the video to YouTube, are they really searching. This is what the platform is for.”
To most, Twitvid has been know as simply a way to share real-time video via Twitter. After Twitter launched their own picture sharing tools, services like Twitpic were forced to evolve and pretty much compete with Twitter. If Twitter were to launch a video service of their own that moves beyond being able to just watch embeds within Twitter, you’d think Twitvid would be under threat. Adham disagrees, especially as a result of the new launch.
“We’re not worried about that. Our network has its own purpose, discovering great videos to watch. When they go to Twitter, they’re going to discover information, links, articles news, pictures, videos. Even if they do their own video posting service, we can always integrate that video. It’s not competitive at all, it’s complementary. That’s our reaction.”
From our testing so far, the new Twitvid seems like a great place to easily build a following around sharing video links. TV companies like Sundance Channel have already been using Twitvid. A myriad of TV companies and shows utilize Twitvid for several number of reasons. Some of these entities include CBS, ABC, AETV, ESPN, MTV, Nick, Glee/The Glee Project etc. CBS, for example, currently utilizes Twitvid for 13 of their prime time shows (Two and a Half Men, Big Bang Theory, How I Met Your Mother, CSI, etc.). These tools will now help them build a following around sharing these clips. For now, only YouTube, Vimeo and Twitvid clips can be shared. When clips from networks’ websites that sometimes use their own proprietary video technology can be shared as well, this can be even more golden.
