After jumping into the micro vlogging (aka video blogging) wars 3 years ago, it looks like 12seconds is taking its final bow by announcing its shut down near the end of October (the 22nd to be exact).

Nearly 3 years ago, David Beach and I decided to grab a beer at a local pub and talk about startup ideas.  I told him a dumb idea and he told me about one called 10seconds.  I said, “we should do that one.”  He said, “okay.”  And that was it.  That is until we figured out that 10seconds.tv was already taken.  12seconds sounded pretty good to us too.

We set out on a journey that would take on a wild ride of ups and downs.  We experienced birth, death and (Beach) even battled cancer.

Today we are announcing the end of 12seconds. (12seconds.tv)

Although far from a failure (aside from the pending shut down that is), 12seconds was facing an up hill battle against Flickr (who offers users 90 seconds of short video bliss) as well as Twitter (who may enter the micro video wars in the future.

Throw in the ever popular Tumblr (who also offers users video uploading) and 12seconds chances for a future victory were not looking too good.

Despite attracting celebrities like Shaq and being embraced early on by Tweetdeck, 12seconds was never able to gain a large following in an age where Twitter and Facebook dominate all things social (at least according to the media).

Promoted Accounts are now officially showing up on Twitter accounts. The new advertising solution from Twitter allows brands to appear on users accounts as “Who To Follow” suggestions.

The program is setup to display possible follow suggestions based on a users Twitter preferences. According to the company, the program uses proprietary algorithms to determine if a user would like the suggestions they are receiving, allowing for account specific targeting.

The launch of the new program has arrived quickly, being announced by company CEO Dick Costolo just last week.

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Twitter COO Dick Costolo has been given the reigns of the company, taking over the position of CEO from site co-founder Evan Williams.

Williams writes of the decision:

The challenges of growing an organization so quickly are numerous. Growing big is not success, in itself. Success to us means meeting our potential as a profitable company that can retain its culture and user focus while having a positive impact on the world. This is no small task. I frequently reflect on the type of focus that is required from everyone at Twitter to get us there.

This led to a realization as we launched the new Twitter. I am most satisfied while pushing product direction. Building things is my passion, and I’ve never been more excited or optimistic about what we have to build.

This is why I have decided to ask our COO, Dick Costolo, to become Twitter’s CEO. Starting today, I’ll be completely focused on product strategy.

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Melody, Movable Type’s cousin (and perhaps frenemy) is in the process of redesigning their user interface before their immanent 1.0 launch.

While the upcoming CMS is proposing a few odd changes to their future layout (i.e. putting the logo at the bottom of the admin page), the proposed layout seems eerily similar to WordPress.

Developers working on Melody are claiming that the layout is borrowed from Movable Type 3 instead of WordPress (which could be true as I’ve never tried MT3), although truth be told it does look much nicer than Movable Type 4 (as well as Typepad). read more

You know you’ve put your finger on the pulse of America when Matt Groening and his staff puts you in an episode of The Simpsons and that’s exactly what happened this past Sunday to Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg.

The appearance occurs at an entrepreneur conference that Lisa takes Nelson to show him the importance of going to college. At the expo Lisa learns that the top people in attendance all dropped out including Richard Branson, Bill Gates and of course Mark Zuckerberg.

The best part? Zuckerberg almost always only talks to people by updating his Facebook page, always starting with the saying “Mark Zuckerberg is…”

With The Social Network reaching movie screens on October 1st, I doubt the Facebook CEO’s appearance was an accident and it was actually really funny. read more

Want to do more with your Foursquare account? Now you can add merit badges to your favorite check-in program, allowing for actual achievements rather than just having your recent locations recognized.

One example of the program is Health Month, a Foursquare game that challenges players to better their lives on a monthly basis by setting up goals relating to mental states, diet, fitness and their overall health. Reach your goals and you can earn up to four merit badges.

Mashable further explains how the Health Month badges work:

Each day, you’ll complete your scorecard and indicate whether or not you satisfied the terms of each rule. You start the month off with 10 life points, and you’ll lose a life point every time you break a rule. Should you finish the month with more than one life point, then you will have successfully survived your bracket and will be placed on the Wall of Awesomeness.

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