Jordan Running, August 25th, 2008 Comments(2)

12seconds.tv has released the first version of its API, allowing developers to integrate the service, which lets users record “video status” updates no longer than 12 seconds, directly into their own sites. Their new REST API is currently only read-only, providing methods to retrieve a user’s video or their “friend stream,” get information about a specific video (including its playback URL), and search videos by tag. More technical details available in our 12seconds.tv API profile.

The video-microblogging site, which is currently offering sign-ups only by invitation, already has a few interesting partners working with the API, including TweetDeck, Blippr, and Phreadz. TweetDeck, a desktop Twitter client shown below and profiled here, allows 12seconds.tv playback directly within the program while Blippr, a micro-review site, uses the API to let users augment their 160-character reviews with 12-second videos, and “Social Multimedia Conversation Network” Phreadz now lets users pull 12seconds.tv videos into their conversations. Both TweetDeck and Blippr are offering invites to 12seconds.tv; details can be found on their respective blog posts.

A likely next step for 12seconds.tv will be to make the API bi-directional, allowing videos to be not only retrieved but also created in third-party applications. Competitor Seesmic’s API supports video creation, enabling, for example, any blog to include video comments. 12seconds.tv is taking feature requests at UserVoice, where its developers hint at video commenting becoming a reality.

12seconds.tv’s API documentation and discussion can be found on Google Groups.