Twitpic Founder Launches Twitter Clone

by Ben Parr

Revenge is a dish best served cloned. Twitpic founder Noah Everett has unveiled Heello, his feature-for-feature copy of Twitter. The move comes just a day after Twitter completed the rollout of its photo-sharing service — a direct competitor to Twitpic.

Heello looks and acts like Twitter in almost every way. Instead of tweeting, users send “pings” to their followers. Instead of retweeting, users “echo” other posts. And instead of following, friends “listen” to their friends. The only real difference is that updates appear in a user’s stream in real-time, which is quite annoying if you want to click on something in a friend’s tweet.

And if that weren’t enough, Heello boasts Twitter and Facebook integration, so your Heello posts can still go to your other social networks. It also includes a real-time feed of all public activity, which currently contains a number of fake accounts claiming to be CNN, Tumblr and Mark Zuckerberg.

The clone seems more of a publicity stunt than a real business. Twitter blindsided Everett when it launched a feature that was directly competitive to his company, and this may be payback. Nevertheless, Everett toldVentureBeat that Heello will soon support video, checkins, SMS integration, mobile apps and a “Channels” feature that works much like Twitter Lists.

Much as we love new social media services at Mashable, we’re not sure what to make of Heello. If Everett was looking for some attention, well, mission accomplished. But his service will have a tough time gaining traction against Twitter, and its 200 million registered users, without any truly innovative features.

Then again, if there’s one skill entrepreneurs have, it’s the ability to charge ahead with blind optimism, even when the numbers are against you.

Twitpic Brings Video to Twitter

by Jolie O'Dell

Twitpic is launching support for video Tuesday, bringing about a new way for Twitter users to share their clips in a timely manner.

With Twitter’s growing importance as a tool for citizen journalism, multimedia uploading and sharing tools are more relevant than ever before. Services like Twitpic, while still fun for vanity purposes, have played a critical role in spreading newsworthy images from eyewitnesses who have been present with mobile phones at world-changing events.

Events such as the evacuation of Times Square, the earthquake in Haiti, the protests in Egypt and many others have been graphically and valuably portrayed on Twitter via services like Twitpic.

And occasionally, Twitpic images not only depict the news, they become the news, themselves. Last year, a photo of a transit worker sleeping on the job was posted to Twitpic and caused an uproar in the media.

While many folks post YouTube links to Twitter when they need to spread the word about an important video, it’s good to also have a tailor-made video-sharing solution for Twitter users.

Twitpic founder Noah Everett told us in an e-mail, “Users will be able to upload video from the site itself, email, and clients that support the new video option. Everything else basically works the same. We’re trying to be a one-stop-shop for users to share their media on Twitter in real-time.”

We asked if the videos would play from within the Twitter web interface, and Everett said, “The thumbnails will still show on Twitter for now; we’ll work with them to get the actual video itself integrated soon.”

Here’s what the new feature looks like on Twitter and on the Twitpic website. Click the images to see the videos in action:

We’re sure that Twitpic’s events and location features will also be a welcome addition to video sharing on Twitter.

Twitpic currently has 17 million users with 30,000 new registrations daily.