I guess the 12seconds team felt that adding Twitter replies and DM’s to your feed wasn’t enough. They also didn’t think that upgrading the site to update in real-time was good enough. So, they have completely redesigned 12seconds.tv….all of it. The new layout is simpler, cleaner, and brings the focus back to the actual content. The sidebar moved to the left side of the page. The colors have been toned down a bit. The yellow and brown color-scheme is gone. I like it.

The Community

One of the things that stands out to me about 12seconds is the community. Not only do they have active and loyal users, but the 12seconds team stays engaged and listens to user feedback. Though they have experienced a lot of growth, they still prefer to interact closely with their users. This is evident in the recent changes to their Daily Challenge.

“We’re going to try doing the challenge for a while without voting.  We used to do it where we picked the winner at around midnight every night so we’re going back to that.  It really allowed us to interact with folks more and we miss it.  Also, Daily Challenges end/start at midnight starting tonight (the way it used to be). Let us know what you think and bump or comment on a challenge entry if you like it.”

Summer of Social Good

12seconds.tv has also hooked up with Mashable to promote the Summer of Social Good. This charity event harnesses the power of social media for a good cause. Just visit the campaign site and create a “12lib” video to help promote the event. 12seconds is also donating $1 for each of the first 50 “12libs” posted, so get on it. If you remember Madlibs, you should have fun with these. Even if you can’t donate right now, you can still use 12seconds to help promote the event.

Check out the 12seconds M&M’s promotion for another example of the cool campaigns they do over there. Make sure to actually participate. 12seconds is probably the best way to share videos, especially with Twitter. Because the videos are limited to 12seconds, you can be sure you won’t waste much time watching them. It’s the perfect companion for the microblogging service that limits you to 140 characters.