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By Jon M. Cohen – New Media Specialist

“What is Twitter?” My 65-year-old mother asks me? This question emerges after she is told that Elizabeth Taylor is on Twitter (A celebrity she is fond of). I look at my mother and just pretend she never asked the question and go on with my day. I think to myself; “Elizabeth Taylor is on Twitter, this may be a sign of the end of the world”. Yes, I do say that tongue in cheek, but the real significant point to take from this fact is that Twitter is getting big, real big and even for people who are so non-technology related (both in age and knowledge).

As for the masses, the average everyday person who is using Twitter and loving it we have seen a great step forward in how and what people can tweet about. Like traditional mass media that evolved from print to audio to video we see with the addition of video to the new Apple iPhone 3GS great changes are on the horizon. With the native ability to post video from the iPhone to YouTube, Mobile Me or share it with email or MMS it gives iPhone owners a lot of choices; but the missing parts to this equation in my view is the ability to share these rich media files with Twitter, Facebook, and FriendFeed. But like in most situations like this, when we see a gap in the technology we can find ways to fill the gap, thus with the iPhone SDK, developers have had a chance to create Apps that can help bridge the gap.

One Video App that I have had a chance to test out is an iPhone App called TweetReel. It is a simple and clean looking App that offers great functionality. Colin from TweetReel was kind enough to disclose to me that even though the App is launching July 7, 2009 and is a great way to share your videos and pictures from the iPhone; this will not stop the TweetReel development team to continue improving the App. He feels that TweetReel will see some great improvements from the soon to be released iPhone 3.1 software update.

From my testing, I have had good experiences with this App. The only issue that I have seen with this App is related to a short video I took and was posting it to my Twitter when a phone call came in, after the call the iPhone went back into the TweetReel App but was not able to keep video saved. My solution to the issue is to capture the video in the native camera app and then just use TweetReel to post the video to my Twitter feed. A simple and effective solution!

One of the nice features of TweetReel is the easy user account setup, and because TweetReel uses your Twitter name your followers have a consistent way of finding you. The price for TweetReel will be $0.99 on launch day (July 7, 2009) and then move up to $2.99. In my opinion this is a small price to pay to get this level of integration to Twitter. Some other future plans for TweetReel include the addition of Facebook, as well being able to save video (thus fixing my above stated issue).

I would highly suggest giving TweetReel a try; it is a great App that has a lot of value for anyone who likes to share video in his or her Twitter feed. My TweetReel, My Twitter