FON (better known for building a WiFi community) launched Twitxr today through their FON Labs group. Basically, it’s Twitter but allows picture uploads when sending a message (which makes it particularly useful for camera phones). FON founder Martin Varsavsky announced the product on his blog. So, yeah, basically it’s a photoblog. You can easily set it up to automatically send your messages to Twitter and Facebook too, though, which is useful. My Twitxr account is here. Here’s an example of a message that was copied over to Twitter. Another feature I like is the fact that you tell it where you are, so location information is included. Varsavsky says it’s specially designed for the iPhone, and they’ve created software that makes uploading text and a photo from the iPhone very easy. As a third party application, though, it isn’t officially available for the iPhone. You have to “jailbreak” the phone before you can install their application. It looks like you can’t simply grab a photo that you’ve taken normally from the iPhone, either. You have to initiate the photo through the Twitxr application. The application automatically adds location information to your photos and updates. Twitxr is the upteenth variation of Twitter to appear (see Jaiku (acquired by Google), Pownce, etc. One clone has even gone to the deadpool. This isn’t even the first Twitter-variation to include photos – see Zannel . This is something Dave Winer has been working on with his FlickrtoTwitter project as well – which sends links of your new Flickr photos to your Twitter account. And photoblogging is nothing new. So as pretty as Twitxr is, perhaps FON should stick to wifi. Update: I’m actually going to re-jailbreak my iphone to test the software – the fact that uploading is so easy and it adds location information is worth noting. If it works really well, this could actually be a reason for me to stop posting directly to Twitter. CrunchBase Information Twitter Fon Twitxr Martin Varsavsky Information provided by CrunchBase → Read More
Treemo is a site where you can upload all types of media (photos, videos, audio clips, and text) from your mobile phone or desktop computer and share them with either the general public or just your friends. Until now, the only way to get your Treemo-hosted content distributed elsewhere on the Internet was to use RSS feeds, but the company has just released a set of embeddable widgets and a Facebook application that should help to spread this content much more effectively. Of the three types of widgets, the first provides a channel of the last 24 media items you have uploaded to Treemo (we’ve embedded an example below), the second highlights just one media item, and the third allows anybody with a cell phone to subscribe to your content and consequently receive notices via SMS when you upload new stuff. The Facebook application will display your most recent Treemo uploads in your mini-feed and embed a channel player into your profile as well. In addition to this widgetization strategy, Treemo is developing an API that will allow developers to integrate Treemo functionality into their websites. A Chinese website called 3GDODO has already soft launched with the API as a pre-release partner, and the API should be available to the public in the first quarter of 2008. Another partner focusing on citizen journalism will also leverage the API to solicit the distribution of niche content. Other smaller upgrades include new language support for Chinese, Portuguese, Spanish, and German, as well as a new homepage that does more to highlight the contributions of your friends on Treemo. Treemo’s mobile social media competitors include JuiceCaster, Zannel (recently reviewed here), and Kyte. Whereas JuiceCaster requires users to download a client to their phones, Treemo is based completely in mobile web browsers using XHTML and WAP. JuiceCaster announced just this week that it raised $6M more in Series C, bringing its total to $15.3M. This past October, Treemo raised $2.55M in its first round, which was led by JK&B Capital of Chicago. http://www.treemo.com/mp/cplayer.swf CrunchBase Information Treemo Juice Wireless Zannel Kyte Information provided by CrunchBase → Read More
For those of you trying to keep up with all the new mobile social-networking services that are springing up (like MocoSpace, Mig33, Aka-Aki, MeetMoi, Mobiluck, Imity, Zyb, etc., etc.), here’s one more to add to the pile: Zannel. Launched quietly in August, it already has more than 500,000 mobile visitors a month, says founder and CTO Braxton Woodham. Formerly the CTO of Infospace Mobile, he brought his core team over to Zannel, which raised $6 million in a series-A round from US Venture Partners and Palomar Ventures last May. Zannel is like a multimedia Twitter. You can microblog and send out short group messages from your mobile phone to your other friends on Zannel. And, as with Twitter, anyone who wants to keep up with your doings can elect to be notified every time you post a new update. But it is really designed for people who want to communicate through pictures and videos, which you can upload from your phone and send out with a short message. “What we are trying to focus on is pulling media into messaging,” says Woodham. If you send a video or picture to someone whose phone cannot handle it, they get a link instead that they can use to download the file later when they are on a computer. Each picture or video can generate a little microblog hanging off it, complete with comments from your friends or admirers. You can choose to make your profile and conversations either private or public. All your posts also live on Zannel’s regular Website. But Zannel is not so much trying to create its own separate social network as it is trying to tap into your existing ones. For instance, it lets you import your Gmail or Hotmail contacts right from the WAP browser on your phone. And you can put a Zannel widget on your blog or MySpace page that constantly refreshes every time you add something new. (A Facebook widget is coming soon). As with most social networking services, people right now seem to be using Zannel for hooking up and even porn. That’s what you get when you encourage people to upload pictures. Those are not the only things they are doing with Zannel, however. You can also find people sharing their travel videos, or asking other Zannel users what kind of shoes they should buy. → Read More
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