Twango

Last updated

Twango's logo. Twango.png
Twango's logo.

Twango was an online media sharing site that supported multiple file types such as photos, video, audio, and documents. Founded in 2004 by Jim Laurel, Philip Carmichael, Randy Kerr, Serena Glover and Michael Laurel in Redmond, Washington, it provided users a means of repurposing their media, including sharing, editing, organizing and categorizing. In addition, Twango saved all the original media and its metadata (this includes, but is not limited to, IPTC and Exif). Non-members were free to browse the site, however only members could upload media to the site. Sign up for a basic account was free, and provided 250 megabytes of upload bandwidth a month.

Contents

Twango was acquired by Nokia [1] in July 2007. In February 2008, Nokia rebranded Twango as Share on Ovi . [2] With the rebranding, the 250 megabyte upload limit was removed. Subsequently, Share on Ovi was rebranded to Ovi Share to conform with the other Ovi services, such as Ovi Mail, Ovi Maps and Ovi Music. [3]

On 7 March 2012, Nokia announced that Ovi Share will be discontinued and closed on 30 May 2012. [4]

Notable Features

Channels

Twango users organize their media in containers known as channels. A user's entire media collection is stored in what is known as "My Media". Channels represent a cross-section of "My Media". The same piece of media can appear in multiple channels, giving a different context to said media. For example, a picture of friends at a party could appear in a user's "friends" channel as well as in the user's "party" channel. Twango members can subscribe to a channel, receiving notifications when new media has been uploaded to a channel or when new comments have been added. Each channel can also be specified as public or private. If it is specified as private it can only be accessed by invitation. Users can also create open channels which allow other users to upload their own content.

Upload methods

Twango members can upload their media in a variety of ways. Users can upload via the website, either through a basic upload interface where the user browses for files to upload one at a time, or through a web based drag and drop uploader which enables them to upload multiple files at once by dragging them from a folder on their machine and onto the browser (this requires ActiveX or Java).

In addition to browser based uploading, Twango also supports uploading through email, mobile phone, and the Windows web publishing wizard.

Twidgets

A twango twidget is an embedded snippet of code (currently Flash or JavaScript) that can be added to a user's blog. For example, a user can embed a Flash ticker on his or her blog which will display all the media from a channel. Twango also has a webcam widget which can be embedded in blogs and provides in-place webcam comments from viewers.

Feeds

Movies and audio are condensed and played back via a Flash-based media player, but media can also be downloaded in the format it was originally uploaded in. In addition, Twango does not implement any technology to block copyrighted material, but instead relies on the community to "flag" inappropriate media. Media that has reached a certain flagging threshold is then automatically removed.

Twango supports various feeds, including channel feeds, most recent media feeds, and most popular feeds. It supports RSS 2.0, ATOM 0.3, and ATOM 1.0

Twango Mobile

Twango Mobile provides an XHTML web site for people with compatible mobile browsers. This mobile site gives access to photos, videos, audio and other media on Twango, as well as some interactivity including the ability to add comments and share media to mobile numbers and email addresses.

Acquisition by Nokia

In July 2007, Nokia and Twango announced that Nokia was acquiring substantially all of the assets of Twango. [5] Shortly after the acquisition, Nokia announced that it was moving into the services field with the introduction of Ovi. [6] The Twango software was one of the first elements of the Ovi platform introduced by Nokia. [2]

On 7 March 2012, Nokia announced that Ovi Share will be discontinued and closed on 30 May 2012. [4]

See also

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Nokia 6620</span> 2005 mobile phone model

The 6620 is a mobile phone created by Nokia, announced in 2005, running on Series 60 2nd Edition and the Symbian operating system. It was the first EDGE-capable phone for the Americas' market.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Flickr</span> Image and video hosting website

Flickr is an image hosting and video hosting service, as well as an online community, founded in Canada and headquartered in the United States. It was created by Ludicorp in 2004 and was previously a common way for amateur and professional photographers to host high-resolution photos. It has changed ownership several times and has been owned by SmugMug since April 20, 2018.

Google Video was a free video hosting service, originally launched by Google on January 25, 2005.

Mobile content is any type of web hypertext and information content and electronic media which is viewed or used on mobile phones, like text, sound, ringtones, graphics, flash, discount offers, mobile games, movies, and GPS navigation. As mobile phone use has grown since the mid-1990s, the usage and significance of the mobile devices in everyday technological life has grown accordingly. Owners of mobile phones can now use their devices to make photo snapshots for upload, twits, mobile calendar appointments, and mostly send and receive text messages, listen to music, watch videos, take mobile pictures and make videos, use websites to redeem coupons for purchases, view and edit office documents, get driving instructions on mobile maps and so on. The use of mobile content in various areas has grown accordingly.

Orb was a freeware streaming software that enabled users to remotely access all their personal digital media files including pictures, music, videos and television. It could be used from any Internet-enabled device, including laptops, pocket PC, smartphones, PS3, Xbox 360 and Wii video game consoles.

The online service imeem was a social media website where users interacted with each other by streaming, uploading and sharing music and music videos. It operated from 2003 until 2009 when it was shut down after being acquired by MySpace.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">MOSH (Nokia)</span>

MOSH was a user defined distribution channel for mobile content initiated by Nokia. The name "MOSH" comes from "Mobilize and Share". The channel could have been used to both download and upload various content for mobile phones or other platforms. File types that were handled were: audio, images, applications, games, videos, documents.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ovi (Nokia)</span> Former Internet services by Nokia

Ovi by Nokia was the brand for Nokia's Internet services. The Ovi services could be used from a mobile device, computer or via the web. Nokia focused on five key service areas: Games, Maps, Media, Messaging and Music. Nokia's aim with Ovi was to include third party developers, such as operators and third-party services like Yahoo's Flickr photo site. With the announcement of Ovi Maps Player API, Nokia started to evolve their services into a platform, enabling third parties to make use of Nokia's Ovi services.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">History of YouTube</span>

YouTube is an American online video-sharing platform headquartered in San Bruno, California, founded by three former PayPal employees—Chad Hurley, Steve Chen, and Jawed Karim– in February 2005. Google bought the site in November 2006 for US$1.65 billion, since which it operates as one of Google's subsidiaries.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Nokia E71</span> Smartphone model

The Nokia E71 is a smartphone introduced on 8 May 2008 from the Eseries range with a QWERTY keyboard targeting business users worldwide. It runs on Symbian OS v9.2, with a Series 60 3rd Edition, second generation Feature Pack 1. The Nokia E71 succeeded the Nokia E61/61i models, building on the base design and form factor but enhancing on the feature set.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">MSN Messenger</span> Instant messaging client

MSN Messenger, later rebranded as Windows Live Messenger, was a cross-platform instant-messaging client developed by Microsoft. It connected to the now-discontinued Microsoft Messenger service and, in later versions, was compatible with Yahoo! Messenger and Facebook Messenger. The service was discontinued in 2013 and was replaced by Skype.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Nokia N8</span> 2010 smartphone model manufactured by Nokia

The Nokia N8 is a touchscreen-based smartphone developed by Nokia. Announced on 27 April 2010, the Nokia N8 was the first device to run on the Symbian^3 mobile operating system and it was the company's flagship device for the year. It was released on 30 September 2010 at the Nokia Online Store before being released in markets around the world on 1 October 2010. There were two version made, the N8 and the N8-00. The N8 was made for Vodafone and locked to its networks, and the N8-00 was made by Microsoft and open network.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">SlideShare</span> American website for sharing presentations

SlideShare is an American hosting service, now owned by Scribd, for professional content including presentations, infographics, documents, and videos. Users can upload files privately or publicly in PowerPoint, Word, PDF, or OpenDocument format. Content can then be viewed on the site itself, on mobile devices or embedded on other sites. SlideShare also provides users the ability to rate, comment on, and share the uploaded content. Launched on October 4, 2006, the service positioned itself to be similar to YouTube, but for presentations. The company was acquired by LinkedIn in 2012, and then by Scribd in 2020.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Nokia E6</span> Mobile phone

The Nokia E6-00 is a smartphone running the Symbian^3 operating system. It supersedes the Nokia E72 as the new Symbian business mobility solution from Nokia following its announcement on 12 April 2011. It shipped with the new "Symbian Anna" version of Symbian^3, and originally retailed for 340 euros before taxes.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Nokia N9</span> Smartphone model

The Nokia N9 is a flagship smartphone developed by Nokia, running on the Linux-based MeeGo mobile operating system. Announced in June 2011 and released in September, it was the first and only device from Nokia with MeeGo, partly because of the company's partnership with Microsoft announced that year. It was initially released in three colors: black, cyan and magenta, before a white version was announced at Nokia World 2011.

Nokia's strategic nomenclature can be traced back in 2005 when the Nseries line was launched, offering devices with flagship specifications and premium hardware at various price points. These devices were considered the "bread and butter" of the company and were often positioned to showcase their latest technologies. Thanks to the newfound consumer and enterprise interest in smartphones at the time, the company introduced four additional collections to diversify their product portfolio and meet demands in most market segments. These new phone series were named Eseries, targeting small business and enterprise customers; Xseries, providing consumer-grade multimedia-focused devices; Cseries, which Nokia used to target both the low-end and mid-range market segments; and Tseries, for devices exclusive to the Chinese market.

Upload components are software products that are designed to be embedded into a web site to add upload functionality to it. Upload components are designed to replace the standard HTML4 upload mechanism. Compared with HTML4, Upload Components have a more user-friendly interface and support a wider range of features.

Microsoft mobile services are a set of proprietary mobile services created specifically for mobile devices; they are typically offered through mobile applications and mobile browser for Windows Phone platforms, BREW, and Java. Microsoft's mobile services are typically connected with a Microsoft account and often come preinstalled on Microsoft's own mobile operating systems while they are offered via various means for other platforms. Microsoft started to develop for mobile computing platforms with the launch of Windows CE in 1996 and later added Microsoft's Pocket Office suite to their Handheld PC line of PDAs in April 2000. From December 2014 to June 2015, Microsoft made a number of corporate acquisitions, buying several of the top applications listed in Google Play and the App Store including Acompli, Sunrise Calendar, Datazen, Wunderlist, Echo Notification Lockscreen, and MileIQ.

Mixcloud is a popular British online music streaming service that allows for the listening and distribution of radio shows, DJ mixes and podcasts, which are crowdsourced by its registered users.

An online video platform (OVP) enables users to upload, convert, store, and play back video content on the Internet, often via a private server structured, large-scale system that may generate revenue. Users will generally upload video content via the hosting service's website, mobile or desktop application, or other interfaces (API), and typically provides embed codes or links that allow others to view the video content.

References

  1. "acquisition on Share on Ovi". twango.com. Retrieved 20 April 2018.
  2. 1 2 "Browse Nokia phones". nokia.com. Retrieved 20 April 2018.
  3. http://www.ovi.com Archived 5 July 2007 at the Wayback Machine
  4. 1 2 "Service Notification: Ovi Share is closing on 30 May 2012". Archived from the original on 26 June 2012. Retrieved 30 August 2013.
  5. "Browse Nokia phones". nokia.com. Retrieved 20 April 2018.
  6. "Browse Nokia phones". nokia.com. Retrieved 20 April 2018.