Twitter Casts Video Services Out Into The Cold, Dark Web

Twitter announced some updates to its app on its blog today. The updated features make using Twitter faster and easier - with nifty little bits of awesomeness to boot (read that post to learn more). The blog didn't share another piece of news about the update though, one that can be found on the iTunes page: Twitter has cast video services Mobypicture and Vodpod out into the cold, dark Web to fend for themselves (or just, you know, upload their videos somewhere else). Fortunately, Twitter isn't something the general public will be using with any regularity five years from now, so maybe they can go live with LinkedIn or something. So according the iTunes update page, "uploading videos vie Mobypicture, Vodpod and Posterous is no longer supported." Posterous wasn't really a surprise as it has been experiencing a slow death since it was acquired by Twitter. And Vodpod was acquired by Lockerz in October of 2011 and seems to be pretty securely occupying another niche focused on "stylish shoppers." The Next Web reports that Mobypicture was kind of caught off-guard though. It experienced some operating issues, fixed them (once notified by Twitter), yet is still getting the ax: The flaw in the way that video is being handed off is apparently in Twitter’s app for iPhone, not the Mobypicture service, says its founder Mathys van Abbe. He says that when Mobypicture received notice of the errors from Twitter, they investigated and uncovered the issue with the Twitter app that was causing the flaw. In an effort to circumvent the problem, Mobypicture created a fix for the media detection issue within hours of first being contacted. But even after being informed of the fix, Twitter contacted Mobypicture and reaffirmed its decision to remove it as a video sharing option and that it would think about bringing it back at a later date. “Moby brought photo and video sharing to Twitter,” Abbe said in a statement to The Next Web. “It saddens us that Twitter is removing us from their own apps even though users really love Moby as an option because of the way we respect their rights, don’t show ads and share to all different social sites.” Though it might also have something to do with the kind of content folks are sharing on Mobypicture. A quick look at what's trending on Moby makes Twitter's "Vine porn problem" look mild by comparison: Maybe it was too much trouble to work with another developer to clean this stuff up? Seems like needless trouble now that they have Vine. But who knows. And more importantly - who's next? (Astronaut image from Shutterstock)

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Twitter Casts Video Services Out Into The Cold, Dark Web

Mary C. Long

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Mary C. Long