How To Add Video to Twitter

I'm excited to be going to Jeff Pulver's 140 Character conference in NYC next week.

I'll be on a panel about twitter video on Wednesday with:

Christian Payne (@Documentally)
Jeffrey Hayzlett (@JeffreyHayzlett) - CMO, Kodak
Sukhjit Ghag (@sukhjit)

Here's the full 140 Conference schedule.

Video on Twitter
Video coming to twitter reminds me of when video came to blogging. It's really not that different.

What you are doing is adding video to a twitter post, just like adding video to a blog post.

Keep in mind: You can record video anywhere and just post a link to it in twitter. It's not hard.

The fun part about it is seeing all the ways that developers are trying to make it seamless.

I've been evaluating many of the twitter video solutions and am looking forward to discussing them at the conference.

YouTube
Big news from yesterday, YouTube now integrates directly with twitter, so that when you post a video on YouTube, a twitter post can automatically be sent.

Here's my first video, recorded via the web, directly to YouTube:



Uploads will be posted to your connected services after they have finished processing, which might take a little while.

YouTube auto tweeted this:
I uploaded a YouTube video -- YouTube to Twitter - Webcam Recorded Video http://bit.ly/v7Gd0

You can set this up from your YouTube Video Upload Page. Let me know if you get this working.

Note: I've been trying to get this working but you've got to log in with a Google username and that's confusing things. Not sure why YouTube is requiring me to use a Google sign on to integrate twtitter. It would seem simpler to just ask me for to autorize YouTube to post to twitter like many other sites do.

Update: I got it working. You've got to log out of YouTube, then log in to Google, then go to YouTube and log in with your Google username/password, then log in with your YouTube username/password, then click on twitter to authorise YouTube to post to twitter, or something like that. Way too confusing.

Qik
I've been using Qik from my Nokia N95-3 to automatically send a message to notify my twitter followers that I'm streaming live. That's been running for a long time.

Here are some of my initial tests of services that integrate directly with twitter. These are tweets that the video services sent out:


Hello from 12 Seconds on 12seconds.tv

12seconds - Hello from 12 Seconds http://tiny12.tv/S62KG


Seesmic Needs More Cowbell!... http://see.fm/51A6ppTdXv


Trying out twitvid.io http://twitvid.io/abJ4


Watch my video on twitvid http://twitvid.com/5E39B

yfrog - test 1:
Recorded to yfrog via tweetie Mac application http://yfrog.us/0vfu5z
Oops. [ An error occured during video conversion, please try again later or upload another video ]

yfrog - test 2:


Testing the tweetie mac desktop app with yfrog video integration http://yfrog.us/7hukoz

Note: When using the tweetie Mac app, you can't preview your yfrog video before saving. It's fast though.

Mobatalk Test 1:
MobaTalk which failed to let me upload using Safari 4. I'm waiting to hear back on where the video was recorded locally to be able to upload it. Most of these services use a flash recorder that records over the internet. MobaTalk records locally giving you a higher quality video.

Mobatalk Test 2:

Testing Mobatalk. Nice quality.... http://8lnk.com/t/469

This test used Firefox.

There are lots more video twitter services to test too.

What are your favorite ways to integrate video with twitter?

Seesmic.com Introduction Video

I love little Vinvin. :-)

Join Seesmic.

Join the conversation.

Reporting for The UpTake: Massachusetts Primary

Here's a 23:41 video of my LIVE broadcast from Boston Beer Works on Primary night 2/5/08.

It was the first integrated LIVE broadcast between Qik and Mogulus. I was excited to be able to work with both companies to make this happen. Thanks a lot. It gives us a glimpse of the future.

You can go to the page on Qik for this video and see all the comments I was getting while broadcasting live from my Nokia N95-3 cellphone over the 3G network to Qik. Comments people make while I am online get streamed to the phone where I can read them while shooting the video.

The stream was then directed to Mogulus which broadcast my stream live to The UpTake viewers.

After I ended the stream the video was posted to Seesmic, where people could post video replies around the video and have a conversation about it.

Featured:
Qik Blog: Super Tuesday with Steve Garfield

The UpTake: Massachusetts Primary Qik Cam Coverage

Mashable: Mogulus Integrates Qik Mobile Streaming–Super Tueesday Coverage

It's more about the conversation than the mobile posting

Photo by CC Chapman: CC BY-NC-SA

At BBC NEWS | dot.life | A blog about technology from BBC News | Mobile video at Davos, Loic LeMeur comments:

"My learning using them in Davos is that in Seesmic people did not like the fact that mobile posting via Qik and Shozu to Seesmic was a one way posting. Both Scoble and myself were just broadcasting and not listening or open to conversations. We will fix this very soon.

Back to the learning: it's more about the conversation than the mobile posting."

This is a good lesson.

When broadcasting live with Qik, you can have a real-time conversation with viewers, by watching the display on the Nokia N95 and talking back.

When you enable Qik to post your archived stream to Seesmic, you need to then log on to Seesmic to participate in the followup conversation. In the meantime, anyone who is logged on to Seesmic can participate in the discussion.

So a couple of things are happening here.

1. Live two-way communication while broadcasting.

2. Follow up conversations about archived streams.

I think both can work as long as you can be selective about which live streams you send over to Seeesmic. As part of the Seesmic community, I'm trying to be careful about what I post there, since unlike Twitter, people can't unsubscribe to me for periods of time when I'm posting a lot.

Qik can now stream to Seesmic

Yay!

I wanted to be able to stream live from the street using my cellphone into Seesmic, so I made an introduction between Qik and Seesmic.

Their technical teams got together, and now, if you have an account on Seesmic, you can enter your Seesmic username/password in Qik, and choose to send your videos to Seesmic.

Very exciting development.

Congratulations to Qik and Seesmic.

Scoble Going to FastCompany.tv and Me

Robert Scoble announced on his blog where he's going next:

Why we’re going to FastCompany.tv

///The thing is that the new technology lets you PARTICIPATE with the people who are in front of the camera. You got a taste of this while I was walking around CES with a cell phone and you could ask questions WHILE I WAS FILMING LIVE. That really changes the equation a lot and that’ll be a key differentiator on FastCompany.tv. After all, if we’re talking to Fast Companies, why shouldn’t they answer YOUR questions live as well as mine?

I left him a comment:

Hey Robert congratulations!

My experience up in NH covering the primary with Qik really got me excited all over again about the PARTICIPATORY aspect of this. I love that it's one of hte things you are focusing on.

I've experimented with Mogulus and hope to try some LIVE broadcasting with it. Finding the right technical solution that works is the tricky part here. I've tried a lot of the live streaming solutions at Boston Media Makers meetings and most times there have been issues that keep the stream from working. Computer issues, configuration issues, bandwith issues... I'll be experimenting more with these technologies to find something that works for me all the time.

And finally Seesmic. Although the videos are recorded, they are live. Alive with people, and timely. On New Years Eve Carol and I had dinner with the world as we watched everyone celebrate and recorded our own toast.

2008 is going to be an exciting year.

See you in the internet and in person...

--Steve

I'd like to make a side note to Jeff Pulver. He asked me to participate in his Bucket List meme. I've been really busy so far this year and have spent some time thinking about goals for 2008. As I responded to Robert Scoble's post, those points are going to be a technology focus of mine in 2008.

My Bucket List For 2008 - Technology



1. Mobile Video Journalism - I am going to be experimenting with mobile video journalism tools like Qik that allow you to broadcast LIVE from the street. I first talked about this at a journalism conference at Harvard in 2006 and now we can make it a reality. It's very exciting. I'll be practicing Journalism By Wandering Around.



2. LIVE Participatory Broadcasts - I love the idea of two-way broadcasts that include viewers. WBZ TV in Boston started experimenting with this using a text chat. Jeff Pulver and Jonny Goldstein have been very active in this space, John Herman has also started experimenting with live improv, and Chuck Olsen has been following the campaign. I like some of the things I've seen MTV do with viewers too. I'm going to be experimenting with tools and technologies in this space to find a reliable solution.



3. The Village Square - As an investor and advisor to Seesmic, I'm excited to be working with them, enabling people to easily participate in video conversations. Since the early days of videoblogging I've been interested in subscribing to people. Seesmic is people. It'll be fun to see where this goes...

I'll be posting more Bucket Lists when I can... stay tuned.

Social Videoblogging

HAPPY NEW YEAR
Happy 2008. That's a video I recorded with Carol last night in my kitchen. It was easy to make. Using Seesmic, I just pressed record and the video was saved and posted to the web. It wasn't just posted to a web page somewhere, it was added to a community. A social community of friends.

SOCIAL VIDEOBLOGGING
As we enter 2008, I see a future where more people will be capturing and sharing unedited moments with friends via social videoblogging.

It's going to be a lot more social for a number of reasons, most important is that it'll be easy for people to have video conversations.

VIDEOBLOGGING BEGINNINGS OF A CONVERSATION
Let's take a look at how we got here.


Four years ago I started Steve Garfield's Video Blog and posted my first video.

That video was posted to a brand new blog. The blog allowed comments. That's where the conversation happened. Sometimes people would record response videos, and post them on thier own blogs and in my commnets, provide a link back.

Sometimes people talked about a certain video on the Yahoo! videoblogging group.

VIDEO HOSTING - A COMMUNITY SQUARE
Then video hosting sites like OurMedia, Vimeo, YouTube and Blip.tv came out which had the added feature of providing a central location where you could post and discuss the videos.

I SUBSCRIBE TO PEOPLE
When RSS 2.0 with Media Enclosures came out, it allowed you to subscribe to someone's feed of videos, so you'd get every new one delivered to you.

What I said about that advancement was that "I Subscribe to People."

I was making a commitment to watch every new video that someone produced.

FROM QUICK TO FULL
Now people are producing videos that span the continuum from a quick, unedited moments, up to a fully produced show.

RECORDING LIVE FROM A COMPUTER
Sites like Seemic, let you record a video using a webcam. Once recorded, the video is immediately available for everyone visiting the site to view. The video sits there at the top of the river of new videos until someone else records something. The conversation happens when someone clocks 'reply', and adds their video to the river of videos, in response.

STREAMING LIVE FROM A COMPUTER
Lot's of sites are now available to stream live video with the ability to chat live. Check out Ustream.tv, Operator 11, Blogtv, justin.tv, ijustine.tv



STREAMING LIVE FROM A CELLPHONE
I've recently been experimenting with Qik, which let's me broadcast a live stream from my cellphone up to the web. While broadcasting, people who are watching live, can type in comments which are then displayed on the cellphone's screen.

After ending the stream, the resultant video can be embeded into a blog.

WHAT'S NEXT
Social videoblogging frees people from expectations. Much like MySpace or Facebook, where you can join to communicate with a group of people you already know, you can do the same on social video sites.

Watch a video, post a response.

Watch the responses flow into a river of video.

Stand on the shore or jump in.

In addition, like on MySpace or Facebook, you can also make friends.

One tip, ignore the negative people. There are always going to be people who criticize what to them looks mundane.

As Chuck Olsen says, Mudane is the new Punk Rock.

Google search for 'Social Videoblogging' - 9 results.

Disclosure: I'm an investor in Seesmic. Contact me if you want to try it. Nokia provided my cell phone and ATT provides my cell service.

Really into Twitter, Seesmic, and other mobile/video social systems.

Dan Bricklin posts about his experience with 'people who are really into Twitter, Seesmic, and other mobile/video social systems'.

Podcast with Laura Fitton about Twitter and using Seesmic and Qik.com:

"We've always talked about how Internet video would be about grandma watching the kid's birthday parties from another city. It's here now, or even more mundane (and potentially more viral) -- here's Laura (of Pistachio Consulting) showing a gift she got (ice cream 'named after her' -- Ben & Jerry's Pistachio Pistachio). (I've been using Internet video for some time now -- Skype and other video conferencing systems, YouTube, etc. -- but this seemed even more lightweight and viral and we were using it casually at a party.)"

This all happened at Laura Fitton's Christmas Eve party. It was a special experience.

Much different than some of the sponsored business card pushing free drink events that happen around town.

It was also different than the live twitter around a table Boston Media Maker meetings I have on the first Sunday of each month in Boston. Next Boston Media Makers meeting Jan 6th, btw, and you are invited.

Laura opened up her home to like minded people who ended up having a fun time with new social systems in person. We had discussions and taught each other things. The only thing on the agenda was fun, but it grew into much more.

Check out my earlier post, How can we apply technologies for good.

Disclosure: I'm an investor in Seesmic.

Investing in Seesmic

Something is happening here:



That's a video by Efisia on Seesmic.

I started videoblogging in 2004 when almost no one was putting video in blogs. There weren't any free hosting sites. You had to figure out how to record, optionally edit, compress, and upload your video somewhere, then figure out how to embed it or a link to it in a blog post.

Throughout 2004, there were so few videobloggers, that we all got to know each other. We all watched each others videos. Visited each other's blogs and commented on everyone's videos.



It was an amazing time, which culminated with us all getting together in January of 2005 for the first vloggercon. A gathering of videobloggers in NYC.



In 2005, things changed. Free video hosting sites popped up and more people started videoblogging. When the sites weren't free our fear was that one of our videos would get popular, and then it'd end up costing us a lot of money. At the end of 2005, RSS 2.0 with enclosures started being used so that we could subscribe to each others videos and have them automatically downloaded for offline viewing.



2006 saw the popularity of community video sites like YouTube, where you could post video to the site without necessarily posting to a blog.

The videoblogging community did not embrace YouTube because it didn't allow access to the source QuickTime video or support RSS 2.0 with enclosures. We were all happy to use desktop aggregators like FireANT to watch all our friend's videos.

While were were all in our little bubble doing that, a YouTube community was growing, and it was growing quickly. People were subscribing to each other's videos, making comments, and developing a community of people.



That brings us to the emergence of Seesmic. Seesmic allows a new user to login and painlessly post a video. The first time I've ever seen some of my social media friends on video is on Seesmic.

Seesmic made it easy for them to post video to the web. That's something I've been speaking about for years, helping people share their stories through video on the web.

I missed it the first time when the YouTube community was formed around online video, outside our videoblogging circle, but I can clearly see it this time. Seesmic is unique.

Although still in Pre-alpha, whatever that means, Seesmic has a few features that make it a powerful tool that will help people connect with each other.

1. Easy to record
Recording a new video is easy. All you need is a webcam.

2. Timeline
The timeline lets you see what people are talking about and you can click on someone's video and see it on the same page without having to load up another webpage. Everything is right there in a dashboard.

3. Threaded Conversations
Recently added threaded conversations allow you to step back one video at a time. New features I can see that will enhance this are allowing you to also step forward.

Jim Kukral solicited Seesmic users to post a video explaining why they love Seesmic.

Here's one that starts off with, "I love Seesmic because it's the first application that I've found that makes videoblogging easy."



That's Christian Payne aka documentally on Seesmic.

Much like Twitter, where you can participate in conversations in a central spot, Seesmic introduces a new spin on things by including video. Seesmic isn't a replacement for Twitter, just a communnity site with a rich membership that's growing every day.

Like in the early days of videoblogging where we could all watch every single video that every other videoblogger made, right now on Seesmic you can watch all the videos, but it's getting to the point where watching everything won't be possible anymore.

That's where the friends feature will come in handy to allow you to follow selected people, without restricting you from watching the public timeline.

You can also follow threads of interest.



That's another video by Efisia where she joins in on the conversation about Seesmic users collaborating to make a movie.

And while we're at it, here's Efisia's fiance, my friend, Kosso:



The possibilities are endless. That's why I'm excited to announce that as of today, I'm an investor in Seesmic.

Seesmic is People.

Let me know if you want a Seesmic invite, I've got a few.

Two Thumbs Up from Loic

Two Thumbs Up - Originally uploaded on flickr by stevegarfield.

Check out pictures of Loic at Video on the Net 2007 in Boston!