Windows

12seconds

Posted by on Dec 7, 2009 | One Comment

It’s easy to be long-winded on the Internet. We’re pretty much encouraged to say whatever we want, write whatever we want, and do whatever we want. This can be great, but the attention span that a lot of people have isn’t necessarily going to enable them to stay focused on your content for hours or even minutes at a time. Therefore, it’s important for you to get to the point, and new services with established constraints are forcing us to communicate efficiently. Twitter is a good example of this with text, and 12seconds is a good example with video.

Have you ever watched a video on YouTube that just seemed to drag on forever, and before you knew it, you completely lost interest in what you were watching? Speaking from personal experience, that happens to me all the time. As the name implies, 12seconds only gives users twelve seconds to use for each video post, so if you’re talking about something, you have no choice but to get to the point. Twelve seconds is just enough time to say what you want without losing someone’s interest, and I love the motivation behind this service.

  • Christopher

    This is the gift of Sesame Street. Generations of young adults with nominal attention span. It is hard to for any naturally attention disorder sufferer to distinguish themselves from their age peers, since everyone has been effectively programmed to presume they are actually and truly assimilating information in 12 second bits. It certainly worked to make generations hooked on MacDonalds regardless whether they actually liked the product or not.

    Now those programmed attention deficits are greasing the wheels of 21st century enterprise and it is chaotic and seriously damaged. This accounts for my frustrations with being unable to find sufficient space for my long, multi-part last name on innumerable web forms, designed by some limited, real world experience, geek who built it. As well, to being astounded at that nonsense that is acclaimed as entertainment, video games, mindless action/adventure movies and what sometimes passes as some semblance of music. Add to this, the fact that it is hard to find real stereo, high fidelity in a world where children, programmed by targeted advertising and peer pressure to believe that an IPod is actually a good value or that much of the noise passed off as music and entertainment, on which this platform thrives, is art. Additionally, it is hard to find new films, at theaters or on movie channels that aren’t banal, reprocessing of first shooter video games.

    Let’s keep this in perspective. Twitter is for Twits! Twitter users are waiting lines for psychotherapy that is so necessary to create individuals from these members of some Borgian collective that cannot stand being disconnected from the hive, even if that contact is without substance or meaning. Anyone that presumes real connection or real information is achieved in less than 140 words, should advance to the line marked, “Urgent Need For Immediate Care”. Hopefully, at least some have, in spite of their deep programming figured out that this is ultimately just another way to expose you to corporate advertising which has people selling their car finishes as well as their own bodies to promote someone else’s product and accounts for public utilities such as mass transit being disfigured with the most vile graffiti of all, more Wall Street advertising.