Toluu

the 12seconds.tv blog

every second counts

Challenges are back… now with VOTING!March 4

Hey 12ers,

Jacob here — It’s not often that you hear from me on the blog, but I wanted to go through some of the new features we launched today and Sol/Beach are not at their computers

We’re excited to re-launch challenges.. we know a lot of you have been missing them. The main difference now is that YOU get to vote on who you think should win everyday! Any time you record a response to the challenge, that video will have a little vote box next to it anywhere it appears on the site. Other 12ers can then click on the “vote” button and give you 1-3 votes, depending on how much they liked the video.

Here’s the catch – you can only give out 3 votes per day. You can give all three to one video or spread it out evenly and give 1 point to 3 different videos – It’s up to you. You can always go back and change your votes too if you see something later on in the day that kicks total ass – just go back to the video you voted on before and it will let you set your vote back down to zero or change it to something else.

At the end of the day (midnight PST), the voting for that day’s challenge will stop and a winner will be assigned based on your votes. You can only vote for the current day’s challenge, but the number of votes will be visible after voting closes.

In addition, we’ve made some other minor improveme

Record your 12s in TweetDeck (plus API news)February 24

@iaindodsworth peering lovingly at us via TweetDeck

Hey Everyone!  We don’t use our blog enough to deliver news so I’m going to take this opportunity to write a blog post to announce that you can now record your 12seconds posts using the best, most popular and completely superior Twitter client – TweetDeck.

It couldn’t be more simple.  Enter your 12seconds credentials after you hit the “12″ button in the header of the application.  Not only will you be able to view all that great 12seconds content, you’ll also be able to record a new post from your webcam by hitting the record button on either the top or the bottom of the column.

It’s our singular goal to provide an application that makes both creating and watching short, pithy videos incredibly easy.  TweetDeck allows us to fulfill that goal by creating an environment whose purpose is to make more sense out of our increasingly busy socialmediasphere (I made up a word!).  In other words, those who use TweetDeck will love it even more and if you haven’t downloaded TweetDeck yet…you really should.

All versions of TweetDeck

How to get people to upload a profile image…January 28

Hey social media expert types, here’s a little tip from your friends at 12seconds about profile images. If you’re creating a social network or other social application that allows the user the ability to upload a personal profile image, make sure that the default image is as stupid as possible. Many sites still try to make their default icons generic or even attractive. Many people like the brown twitter icon for instance. Others become apathetic when they see some boring grey box with a simple face or emoticon, such as what Yahoo uses.

The 12seconds default profile image is stupid. It is actually a photo of me (Beach) when I was about 16. I made it black and white and slapped a 12 on top. Who wants that guy as your profile image? That’s right no one.

A little story about this image. It was 1986 or something. I was living in Santa Cruz, but going to high school in Aptos, which is a little south of Santa Cruz. Aptos High was having their annual “Kowabunga Beach Ball” dance. You see, Aptos, like Santa Cruz, is a beach town. Because of this, we have to endure clever ideas such as calling a dance th

Santa Cruz is Super!January 18

Well, it’s been way too long since our last post. I think we need to update this thing more, so I’ll try my best to give you all something new more often.

Since the last post, we went to the Crunchies and got runner up for Best Bootstrapped Startup. That was cool. It was nice that Dave McClure was giving out the award since he was one of the first people we spoke with after we launched the pre-alpha for last years SXSW. He gave us great advice over BBQ ribs on a rainy day in Austin. He said to never tire of your focus but get plenty of rest because it’s good to be awake if you can… At least that’s what we think he said. It was hard to tell because of all the rib eating and stuff.

So here we are. Still bootsrappin’ and still in Santa Cruz. The title of this post is “Santa Cruz is Super!” and here’s why. In Santa Cruz, they write a big story about you for the front of the business section of the local paper just for getting runner up for an award! Beat that San Fracisco or San Jose! It’s not gonna happen. But it does in Santa Cruz. Check it out: 12seconds wins runner-up at 2008 Crunchies.

This is a special place. The people are kind and supportive. I was actually part of the first internet startup here in town. IUMA. It was 1993. We’d ge

The Crunchies – Please Vote for UsDecember 30 2008

12seconds has been nominated for a Crunchie Award. “Best Bootstrapped Startup”. This is very exciting for us. Let me get this out of the way now… Please vote for 12seconds. You can vote once per day, so keep coming back and cast a vote until the polls close. 

“Bootstrapped”, in this sense, means a company that hasn’t raised more than $100,000. In our case, we haven’t raised a penny.  There have been many articles written about us and our approach lately, but check out what Robert Scoble has to say in his post from 12/27, “30 Minutes at 12seconds.tv Shows Future of ‘Reality Based’ Startups“. Scoble came by the day after Christmas to hang out and to see what we’re up to… I’ll embed the video below. It’s pretty cool. Scoble has been very gracious. 

“The video I shot with 12seconds.tv is a good example of “real” entrepreneurialism that will lead to good things for all of us.”

It’s been quite a year. Sol and I realized today that we first met up and talked about the idea of 12seconds (then 10seconds) last December 19th. This was the third time I had ever seen him