TwitVid.io strikes back — lets you tweet directly from webcam

updated
The combination of Twitter and real-time video is nirvana for the socialite.

What more would you want than to be able to sit there and tweet videos of yourself in rapid fire, all day long?

Now TwitVid.io is letting you do just that: tweet videos directly from your webcam on your computer. It will be ready by the end of the weekend, says TwitVid.io co-founder Chrys Bader. You’ll just hit a button directly on the site that says “Direct from webcam,” and it’ll take your video and upload it to your tweet as soon as you hit stop.

It’s the latest counterpunch in a fast-moving race between TwitVid.io and its San Francisco cross-town rival Twitvid.com to out-(t)wit each other.

TwitVid.io struck first on Monday, offering an easy way to upload video into a link that you can then tweet. On Friday, TwitVid.com launched almost identical functionality, but with the added features such as real-time streaming and an API that lets other sites integrate it into their own offerings, thus helping TwitVid.com with distribution.

Now TwitVid.io, a two-person team with a mere $20,000 in backing from Y-Combinator is hoping to halt the momentum of the five-person, venture backed TwitVid.com. It’s releasing its own API in just an hour from now, and it’s got a couple of other features to unload after it gets the webcam feature up.

Other TwitVid.io features are notable, mainly for their promotion of viral activity. For example, TwitVid.io lets you retweet and reply to video tweets directly on the TwitVid.io site, letting you follow the conversation about a video live on the site. It also offers a “like” feature. Bader noted that celebrities like iJustine (http://twitvid.io/ijustine) and MC Hammer (http://twitvid.io/mchammer) are using TwitVid.io.

He says Fliggo, the company that built TwitVid.io, has been developing a new video sharing platform for 18 months and that this makes it easy for the duo to release features on the fly. They also released a widget that lets you embed your tweets in your blog.

This fight is getting serious. Not only are the names confusingly similar. But Twitvid.io’s team apparently sought to buy the domain name Twitvid.com, but it was taken and the owner demanded a high price. Then, Eatlime group swooped in and apparently bought the domain at the high price (helped, of course, by the fact that it had venture money).

[Update: And now TwitVid.com just slapped back, rushing out its own webcam feature even before TwitVid.io gets its up. It also promises a bunch of features such as sharing video playlists on twitter and adding video responses. It will also be modifying it design to make it look more engaging.]

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