So, there’s Twitter for text, Pownce for text and everything else + comments, but where’s Twitter for everything else? Undoubtedly a phenomenon recently with the rise of Flash has been live broadcasting via webcam and a microphone. From France (note: hence the service is half in French), a new service called Poodz recently hit the launch scene — and combines exactly all that.
Very much a la Twitter, Poodz allows users to have followers and follow other people. Except, instead of sending out crippled 140 character mesages, they are able to make and send out live videos from their webcam, pictures via upload or URL, audio via their mic, and obviously, 250-character text.
A “What’s Fresh?” section of the site shows off the latest Poodz, and the very fact that people are posting something more than text — videos and photos — gives them the ability to visually feature the interesting stuff that’s present on the site. A la YouTube, users can also create and subscribe to channels.
Of course, being able to post text and photos is great, but trying out their live video and audio recording service, I think this is where Poodz shines. Sure, there’s Seesmic, which is based around the idea of video conversations and uses Twitter as one of the main sharing mechanisms, but Twitter for media I think is a wholly different concept. Being able to record live video and audio and broadcast it out within seconds to followers is I think much more powerful than making use of a third-party service. Conclusion: despite its horrible name, the service is indeed extremely cool. And if they’re able to make a full English version of the site, it could do very well.
