Twitter itself may not have a final business model yet, the hot thing these days is for third-parties to use the service to create their own business models. Short-form video startup 12seconds is the latest to do this, rolling its users' likelihood of tweeting their videos into some corporate sponsorships.
Specifically, 12seconds is launching a new type of product called "12omercials." These are essentially regular 12seconds video posts focused on specific products or causes. The first two sponsors taking part are electronics giant LG and Outlook plug-in maker Xobni. These two companies are paying 12seconds to entice its users to make 12second video clips talking about their products and then to send them out on Twitter.
The videos contain links to the products as well as a Twitter page for the brand to encourage video viewers to follow them. But why would you want to shill for a product when 12seconds is the one getting paid for it? Well, because 12seconds provides the incentive of a prize if you participate. For example, the first prize to be given away is an all-expenses paid trip to Las Vegas, 12seconds co-founder Sol Lipman tells me.
But you can also make 12omercials outside of 12seconds' sponsorship deals. Say you have a cause that you want to promote, or just have something you want to sell -- you can create a 12omercial talking about the product/cause and link to where viewers can find more information. 12seconds isn't charging its members to make these videos.
After an initial spike in traffic when the service launched late last summer, 12seconds has been seeing steady growth, according to Compete. Lipman says that while these numbers aren't completely accurate (they rely only on U.S. data, for example), they are pretty good indicators of growth.
And while 12seconds is still much smaller than Twitter itself, the service has done a good job of leveraging the micro-blogging site to spread its videos. Approximately 15 percent of all Twitter users now see a 12seconds link in their streams at some point, Lipman claims. It's that penetration that led several brands to approach the company about interesting marketing opportunities -- which is how 12omercials were born.
That's great news for 12seconds because it allows the service to more than cover its costs, Lipman tells me. This is impressive and significant given that 12seconds is still completely bootstrapped, having never raised outside capital -- and it remains a side project for all of those involved. Both of those things could, and probably will change in the future as the service continues to grow, Lipman notes.
As part of the arrangement, LG will be using 12seconds' application programming interface (API) to set up a way for users to record 12seconds videos directly on its site as well. And it will be displaying some of the videos there -- which will undoubtedly be great exposure for 12seconds.
When 12seconds emerged as the sort of "true" video Twitter (because of its 12seconds limit, as opposed to something like Seesmic which has much longer limits), a lot of people laughed off the idea. But its low barrier to entry may prove to be the perfect format for something like this -- crowd-sourced commercials that spread virally on Twitter.
Lipman says that 12seconds currently hasn't talked to Twitter about the idea of cross-promotion for 12omercials -- similar to what Federated Media is doing with ExecTweets -- but he notes that they're certainly open to the idea.
Along with 12omercials, 12seconds is opening a new analytics service to its users to track how well their videos perform. All of these features will be available starting today.
