Sam Street and Sean Miller, creators of Picli.com, have announced the beta launch of Twicli, a free service that allows users to upload both photos and videos through the Twicli platform and display them to their friends on Twitter. Users can upload photos and videos and comment on each, these comments are then broadcast on twitter via the means of @replies. Unlike many other apps, Twicli is built to support OAuth, an authentication platform used by Twitter for all upcoming apps. With OAuth Twitter users never need to provide their password, they simply click ‘Authorize’ which tells Twitter to allow Twicli read/write access to certain account functionality (i.e. posting tweets). Twicli is also ready to support iPhone 3.0.

Twicli Press Release

What is Twicli?

Twicli is a free service that allows users to upload both photos and videos through the Twicli platform and display them to their friends on Twitter.

Twicli has been designed with user experience in mind. We want the site to look and feel like Twitter offering a seemingly seamless transition from one site to another.

Users can upload photos and videos and comment on each, these comments are then broadcast on twitter via the means of @replies. The Twicli frontpage features the most recent content uploaded by Twitter users.

Twicli uses it’s parent company (Picli) to power it’s social photography technology alongside integration with the brilliant Twitter API.

Unlike many other apps, Twicli is built to support OAuth, an authentication platform used by Twitter for all upcoming apps. Twitter is slowly urging developers to gradually migrate to this platform. Twicli is one of the first to implement it fully.

With OAuth Twitter users never need to provide their password, they simply click ‘Authorize’ which tells Twitter to allow Twicli read/write access to certain account functionality (i.e. posting tweets).

Why is Twicli better than other photo sharing twitter sites?

Twicli has been designed to ‘feel like twitter’ - you can import your twitter background and colours onto Twicli - providing a smooth transition between Twitter and Twicli.

New Trends - Twicli generates it’s own trends. Meaning you see what trending topics are hot
rightnow in regards to photos and videos - not the general Twitter trends.

‘View All Sizes’ - As user’s photos are uploaded they are resized, but the full resolution version is always available.  Also, being able to see what image sizes are available makes it easier for bloggers to grab a smaller size if needed.

OAuth - Twicli is one of the first apps to fully integrate Twitter’s implementation of OAuth. Twicli is totally safe and secure as users never need to enter their login information.

Sets. Twicli supports sets of photos and videos, and you can mix both content types in a set. Don’t spam your friends with photo after photo, just upload them all at once into a set and your friends will see all your content from one tweet. Perfect for photo/video blogging your trips - now you can send a lot more photos at once(without annoying anyone and losing followers)

iPhone 3.0 Support.  We’re very excited about iPhone 3.0. Once it’s released, creating photo/video sets on Twicli will be a breeze as you can attach more than 1 piece of content to an email.

Videos - Upload your videos to Twicli through the site or via email. There is no limit on video length [like some other services], only on filesize (50MB)

Powered by Picli. - Twicli is powered by it’s parent company Picli, established in 2006

User List - See a list of integrated twitter users who use Twicli. A cute little feature.

Why this is cool:

Users can use Twicli to microblog using video and high resolution pictures without ever going near a computer.

The news is full of user generated content.  In fact the most memorable pictures and videos of certain bignews events, say the 7/7 tube bombings or the recent G20 protests have come from mobile phones.  There is one problem with this though, the people filming the content have to go back to their computer in order to upload the content to the internet, thus can creating a delay in delivery.  For example it wasn’t for days after the event that the footage of a police officer pushing Ian Tomlinson surfaced. 

Twicli could bridge that gap.  Users can send in footage from the actual scene mere minutes after something has occurred.  There is nothing better than twitter to blow something up virally and by uploading to twicli users could have their content seen by thousands before they’ve even got home.

Furthermore with twicli’s own trends system, if there are a large group of users submitting content at once from a major event, twicli would recognize this and promote that trend to the front page.  Just like twitter.

Upcoming Features:

- Google Maps integration
- iPhone App
- Comment moderation
- Video thumbnails
- Site translation into various languages
- Audio
- Favorites
- New polished design that replicates the look and feel of twitter.
- API

Fact Sheet

Twicli was released into BETA on May 11th 2009 after 2 weeks development during evenings after work and weekends. Twicli was co-founded by Sam Street and Sean Miller of North London, UK. They are the creators of Picli.com a social photography network. Twicli (aswell as Picli) uses Amazon S3 as their storage solution. Twicli was built in 2 weeks after we were unimpressed with the current Twitter photo solutions.

Sam Street - @wirah:

Sam Street, 25 is a web developer and professional visitor living in North London. Sam was homeless from a young age and grew up on the streets of London selling fortune cookies he moulded himself from discarded onions and ink. After years of failure Sam finally saved enough money to purchase ‘PHP for the World Wide Web’ by Larry Ullman (http://www.amazon.com/World-Second-Visual-QuickStart-Guide/dp/0321245652) With so much free time, rather than burn the book for heat, as he did with The .NET Handbook, Sam studied PHP for years but was unable to put his knowledge to use. In 1999 Sam coined the phrases “fits like a glove” and “son of a gun” which brought him a lot of royalty payments and enough money to buy a Macbook Pro.

Days later, Picli.com was born.

Sean Miller - @samoflak

Sean Miller,  26 is a web and multimedia designer and olympic level tiddlywinks player currently residing in North London.Sean first studied multimedia design at Brunel University.  Upon learning of his talents they immediately
offered to rename themselves “Sean’s university”.  Sean declined this offer, as such fame would have derailed his plan to take over the monster raving looney party and run for Prime Minister.
Having lost the election Sean went to work in a zoo as a fake Camel.  Although fun, this didn’t last long.
Soon after Sean met up with Sam and they discussed the idea of picli.com which they immediately set about working on.

You can contact us any time via [email protected]
@twiclistaff for Twicli related topics.

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