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Twitvid relaunches as Telly, a Pinterest for video

Twitvid relaunches as Telly, a Pinterest for video

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When Twitter launched its own photo-uploading service in conjunction with Photobucket, it put a serious dent in the user bases of photo services like yFrog and Twitpic. While Twitter hasn't rolled out its own video-uploading solution just yet, market leader Twitvid must see something coming. Twitvid is today relaunching as Telly, a video curating site that lets you collect videos and post them inside specific topic pages like "My Favorite Steve Buscemi Moments."

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When Twitter launched its own photo-uploading service in conjunction with Photobucket, it put a serious dent in the user bases of photo services like yFrog and Twitpic. While Twitter hasn't rolled out its own mobile video-uploading solution just yet, market leader Twitvid must see something coming. Twitvid is today relaunching as Telly, a video curating site that lets you collect videos and post them inside specific topic pages like "My Favorite Steve Buscemi Moments."

It all works via a simple bookmarklet you drag to your bookmarks bar and click when you want to save a video. Telly looks great, but just seems to work and act a lot like Pinterest, the Facebook-integrated photo-curating site making waves lately. Telly also asks you to sign in using Facebook or Twitter, but doesn't post everything you do to your Facebook Timeline just yet.

Inside the app, you can follow other users, subscribe to topics like "Funny Cats" and "Jeremy Lin Crushing It," and collect your favorite Epic Meal Time videos in a "Food" collection. So Telly essentially lets you create YouTube Playlists, except they can include videos from any website. The company is leveraging its current base of around 15 million users and 10 million videos to get the ball rolling. Celebrities like Howie Mandel and Sara Bareilles, having already used Twitvid, are already signed up. You can follow these people, sites like ESPN, as well as friends of your own — videos these people and brands post pop up in a Path-esque chronological feed inside Telly.

While Telly does display content from external sites much like how Pinterest does, it includes embedded YouTube ads and links the source content very obviously. "We don't want to be perceived as a video app referrer," CEO Mo Al Adham told me. One key thing to note is that Telly does still have the ability to host videos you upload via the Twitvid API, though Telly won't have any native mobile apps out for a little while. So while Telly does add a whole new dimension to the old Twitvid, it still inevitably feels like yet another content curation app.