Twango is a Redmond, WA-based media sharing site founded by former Microsoft employees (which is probably the reason for its Redmond location!). Also, the site appears to be built on Microsoft technogies such as the .NET framework, ASP and MSSQL.
The site has the same principle as those like DivShare: allowing users to upload files and where appropriate to embed them into web pages. Without registering, Twango limits you to 10MB files without an account and 100MB with an account. This is roughly the same (perhaps a bit lower) than its competitors and doesn’t give it anything unique.
Twango does, though, allow you to embed your files (providing you get an account). This is quite useful if you are into adding things such as music to social networking profiles. Similar services are offered by other services though and it isn’t anything that unique.
Finally, Twango has facilities to view through people’s files. This makes me feel a bit strange as I’m not quite sure if all files I upload will be made so public. I also think the site’s abilities to play videos etc are somewhat pointless as I’d be more likely to go to more specific sites such as YouTube for videos, Flickr or Wikimedia Commons for images or Odeo or RadioBlogClub for audio.
This review has been pretty negative; Twango offers nothing unique and tries to take aspects of other services and mix them together but doesn’t do it well. If I have made any errors in this review, or if Twango staff feel I have been unfair, they are more than welcome to post a rebuttal.
Thanks for writing your thoughts on Twango. We appreciate it and certainly take your comments on board.
First, the files you upload via our new one-click file hosting feature are not visible in any browse views. Unless you know the exact URL, which contains a unique GUID, you will not be able to view the media.
Also, I’d really like to understand why it makes more sense to use specific sites for each media type, i.e., one for video, another for photos, etc. In the old days, we used to carry one camera for video, one for stills, and another for stills. But increasingly, these media types can all be captured by a single device. Why would consumers wish to learn a different site for each media type? Let’s say you go on a trip. You use your digicam to capture stills and video. Do you think your friends and family would rather see all your stuff in a single place, or jump between two sites to see the two different media types?
Best Regards,
–Jim Laurel
Co-Founder, Twango
The more specific sites have much bigger collections and also because they specialise it means they can introduce new features quicker etc.
I suppose that makes sense if your view of social media is solely the “hits” business. We believe that’s an important part of the Web 2.0 landscape for sure. But we also think that the “long tail”, in which people are sharing personally-relevant media with their family and friends is going to emerge as an extremely important as well.
People who are sharing their lives with each other care less about the number of media from other random people than about how good the site is for sharing media with the people they care about. And I’m convinced that the single media sites will eventually fade away. They just don’t make sense in the long run.
And as to innovating faster, you might notice that Twango has been adding features at a rapid pace. In fact, today we are announcing the ability to visualize Twango members and media on Google Earth!
Check out the announcement here:
http://blog.twango.com/twango/2007/05/view_twango_med.html
Cheers - Jim Laurel
Co-Founder, Twango
http://www.twango.com/jim