PR 2.0: Twitxr is the Twitter for Pictures

Wednesday, February 20, 2008

Twitxr is the Twitter for Pictures

by Brian Solis

We have Twitter for text, Seesmic for video, Jott for voice, utterz for all forms of multimedia, and now we have Twitxr for your pictures.

Yep, it's the latest shiny new micromedia service - meaning that you're can share and discovery content in "Byte-sized" portions.

Twitxr, however, allows you to tell your story through text and pictures.

Michael Arrington of TechCrunch calls it photoblogging. But, if Twitter and Tumblr are to blogging what twitxr is to photoblogging, then we might have something altogether new...maybe "micro photoblogging," "photo rivers," or "picture streams."

Incubated in FON Labs, Twitxr lets people share their pictures and text (140 characters, sound familiar?) within the community as well as providing extensions for simultaneous publishing within Twitter and Facebook.

Like Twitter, I can publish my own content and also follow "friends" in order to see their updates in my timeline. There's also a pretty cool friends map that leverages the GoogleMaps API.

According to FON, Twitxr was developed with the iPhone in mind and the company developed an application that lets users upload pix directly from their phone. However, in order to install the app, iPhone users have to use Jailbreak, which I'm a bit reluctant to try.

So, I tried the "post by email" feature by sending a photo directly from the phone to "my personal" Twitxr email address...but it didn't work. Ideally, I should be able to email or text message the picture without having to manually do so at the site or install anything in order to achieve the best results.

I'm almost certain that I would use Twitxr as a way of sharing the images I stumble across and feel like shooting at any given moment - if I can do so directly from my phone. I haven't yet joined any image-based network dedicated to camera phone photography, because it's just not my thing. And truthfully, it's a hassle to do so most of the time.

For more formal picture sharing in my lifestream or workstream, I either cut and paste a link from flickr directly into Twitter, or, I use Dave Winer's new FlickrToTwitter service.

Here's an example:

Winer's service allows you to "tag" images as you upload them to Flickr and have them appear in your Twitter stream / river (twiver). It works extremely well once it caches your user-generated tag, in my case "fortwitter" into its RSS monitoring process. It is an ideal solution for sharing pictures I want to share in Twitter, whereas, the content sourced for and shared in Twitxr, would be a bit more casual, unpredictable, and fun.

What matters the most is that there are new social tools introduced everyday that extend our ability to produce, discover, and share relevant content. While not everyone is capable of creating and sharing compelling or meaningful information, the ability to do so is what empowers those that do. It's our job to filter the signal to noise ratio to stay connected to those whom we align using the tools that link us together.

For my profile on Twitxr, click here.

Connect with me on Twitter, Jaiku, Pownce, Plaxo, LinkedIn, or Facebook

1 Comments:

Blogger Unknown said...

In the UK you can use http://www.statusadder.com , it lets you send 3gp video, pics, text to your twitter account and to your blog and facebook as well if you want all at the same time

3:23 AM  

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