Video apps that cater to Twitter users are all the rage at the moment, but this particular bandwagon is filled to overflowing with apps that rock jostling for mindshare with apps that barely function.
We’ve spent the past couple of days testing and retesting a slew of these sites, and we are ready to present our top five picks for sharing video content on Twitter. Read on to find out which app comes out on top and which ones didn’t make the cut.
5. TweeTube is currently available only for Mac OS X and requires a download, but it allows users to share webcam videos, images, YouTube videos, and links via Twitter. The video component reminded us a bit of 12seconds.tv or Seesmic’s video offering from back in the day, i.e., last month. It wasn’t our favorite app to play with, and the limitations seem to outstrip the benefits.
Type: Twenty-five second webcam uploads that are embeddable and linkable with Twitter-enabled comments.
4. BubbleTweet is a service we’ve been trying and testing for several months with mixed results. However, the premise is great for Twitter. The site lets users upload a simple, 30-second webcam recording, which then shows up on Twitter as a small, unobtrusive “bubble” of video over the web interface. BubbleTweet also lets users upload prerecorded video content.
Type: Thirty-second webcam recordings or video uploads that appear in a video bubble over the Twitter web interface.
3. TwitVid.io is the Twitter-friendly video recording and uploading tool from video website-creating service Fliggo. It allows users to record up to ten minutes of video from a webcam or upload videos they’ve already created and tweet a URL. Co-founder Chrys Bader also tells us they’re getting ready to launch an iPhone app soon.
Type: Single-user webcam recordings of up to 10 minutes or video uploads from a drive.
2. Twitcam is a pared-down offering of parent company LiveStream. It runs a Twitter-based chat program alongside the video itself, and videos are archived for linking and embedding after the fact. Unfortunately, the tweet/chat module only allows users to send out one tweet every 30 seconds, which minimizes the real-time fun to be had. Still, it’s been one of the easier, more fun apps we’ve tried today.
Type: Single-webcam live-streamed video with Twitter-based chat module and post-stream archive of video and chat.
1. TwitVid is a great little app we wrote about recently that allows users to record and upload video from a webcam or any video-enabled mobile device or to upload prerecorded video. They also have a nifty iPhone app that works like a charm. The site also lets users auto-post their TwitVids to other sites such as Facebook and YouTube. Best of all, each video has its own “like” and “retweet” buttons as well as Meebo-powered chat, all of which feed back into the Twitter stream. As far as Twitter integration with video, we tend to think TwitVid does it best.
Type: Single-user webcam/mobile recordings with retweet, chat, “buzz,” and other Twitter options.
