Silicon Florist

Tweet! SplashCast announces Twitter integration, Columbia Records deal

Rick Turoczy | September 13, 2007

SplashCast, the Portland-based media company that enables anyone to create a media channel out of practically anything they have lying around the house—video, music, photos, narration, text, as well as RSS feeds, PowerPoint presentations and PDF documents—has announced a groundbreaking new feature for their SplashCast player: integration of Twitter.

SplashCast now offers the only media player online that allows quick, inline messaging to Twitter. Your viewers will be able to click the Twitter icon in your players, provide their username and login and then enter a message to be sent with a link to your channel to their entire network of friends on Twitter. Think Twitter’s just for the early adopter tech crowd? Readers of Sally Forth in the Sunday comics and viewers of the MTV Video Music Awards might disagree.

They also apparently signed a deal with some little record company called Columbia Records.

That deal carries with it two additional technology features that benefit all SplashCast users, but Columbia-act Coheed and Cambria will be the first to use the new features:

FanCast, our new mobile publishing feature, will allow the band’s fans to upload photos, audio files and video from their mobile phones to the Coheed and Cambria channel.

The second feature that will be deployed first on Columbia Records artist channels is live chat. Fans will be able to discuss whatever is on their minds in real time with our new in-player chat functionality.

I know, I know. I led with the technology.

I realize that the SplashCast deal with Columbia Records is huge. For both the company and the awareness of the SplashCast player. Not to mention Beyonce. And Bruce.

And, this is huge for Portland, as well. More and more the music mecca, this deal meshes incredibly well with the local culture.

All good points. And all worth congratulations. But I stick to my lead for three reasons:

1. SplashCast is the first media delivery application to embrace the power of Twitter as part of its core feature set.
2. This marks a decided move beyond simply “publishing” media to facilitating media distribution and promotion.
3. I guessed this Twitter integration was coming.

Additional coverage of the SplashCast announcement can be found on the SplashCast blog, Center Networks, TechBizMedia, and Mashable.

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