12seconds: A DUMB Idea That Has Potential


Mobile/E-Mail Post on 12seconds.tv
Web 2.0 is full of DUMB ideas! Stupid start-ups and ridiculous culminations of dumb ideas with even dumber ones! Mash-ups typically lead to tools that are either brilliant or ridiculous – a constant stream of new ways to distract me from doing my job and staying on task.

At this point, many of you are scratching your heads wondering what I am talking about, as your not self-declared online “geeks”. Hence, the term Mashups may mean very little to you, and honestly, let it stay that way. What’s more important for non-tech-geeks to understand is that some of the strange tools that help make the web what it is today, may at first seem useless, but with time, actually gain merit.

Twitter is a great example. If you use Twitter, you know how difficult it is to explain Twitter. If you don’t use Twitter, you can’t figure out why anyone would bother. It appears to be disjointed conversations with no real focus. Surprisingly it’s not. In fact, I’m pretty sure it’s doing something profound, and I hope that someone like this creates a video like this about Twitter, because it would be a great thesis. And if you don’t know what Twittter is, watch this twitter video and you’ll be caught up on this so far very disjointed post.

Side note: Twitter is a huge traffic generator for our clients who use it regularly. Many have it as their 3rd most important traffic source behind Google and direct links!

So I’ve rambled enough. Today, I present 12seconds. This is said to be the “twitter of video”, but I disagree. I call it “the video for twitter”! Meaning that when I use 12seconds, it notifies Twitter so that my followers can watch the video. Which, by the way, is just what it says, 12 seconds of video, nothing more.

Dumb, right? Wrong, with a caveat.

This past week, while we were in Valencia touring a winery, we saw our first mechanical grape harvest. And since I know that many people, myself included, had never seen a mechanical harvester work, I took out my camera (cell phone) and recorded a video. A 12 second long video. Wham, bam, and after a quick email, my video was announced to the whole world. All 12 seconds of it. The best part though is that within minutes, I had responses.

What is that thing? Where are you? What are those (in response to the grapes below)?

In less then 15 minutes, I received several inquiries about the video. I could have, if I wasn’t busy snapping 400 or so photos, responded at once and started a dialog. Not to mention that in 12 seconds, I showed a video to a potentially limitless audience that may have neither seen a mechanical harvester, nor grape harvest, before. Did it change lives? No. Could it aid you in building your brand? Yes.

Watch my videos below and tell me what you think. Then sign up for 12seconds and make me a friend!

Cheers,

Ryan Opaz


Mobile/E-Mail Post on 12seconds.tv


Mobile/E-Mail Post on 12seconds.tv

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