You get a user name with an @ sign, and you @ mention people. No hashtags, though. Just like on Twitter, you can choose your basic design and set a background image. Instead of tweets, you post pings. They're 140 characters long. You have the option to share them to Twitter or Facebook. You can add a photo, which the posted ping will display as an awkwardly cropped version inside the post. You don't follow. You listen. Listeners, not followers. Get it? And it really has Twitter beat on this one: Instead of the awkward word retweet, on Heello, you echo. You can also have a private conversation with an individual or a group. The group conversations are the one feature that Twitter doesn't have. But is that reason enough to launch a service that's otherwise essentially the same (except that it lacks hashtags)?

When Everett first talked about Heello, it sounded like it would be something new. Last August, a year ago tomorrow, Everett told the New York Times Heello was "tackling communications with groups, ... building services that help bring teams together online." Group DMs are the only feature in Heello as it launched today that would seem to address that problem, and it's not exactly a novel idea (see Facebook and Google Plus).

So what gives? Where is Heello going with this?

On August first, the Heello Twitter account posted this ambiguous message:

The "new Heello" sure looks like the old Twitter.

It's worth remarking that the launch of this Twitter clone coincides with Twitter's launch of its native photo-sharing service. Everett's other company, TwitPic, has been a default option for uploading photos from many Twitter apps, including official ones, but now Twitter's in-house photo uploads will threaten that status. In exchange for Twitter building in TwitPic's functionality, Everett has released an app that copies Twitter. Everett tells VentureBeat that this was "a complete coincidence," but he's "glad the timing happened that way." He goes on in that interview to hint at some upcoming features, all of which sound Twitter-like. Instead of lists, for example, Heello will have channels.

Currently, it's a Web-only app, which is limiting. The homepage says mobile apps are "coming soon." The main stream has three tabs: your pings, which is the feed of the people to whom you are listening, your replies, and a tab called "What's Happening?", which apparently streams all pings live. It tends to lag rather far behind, but right now, it's a good way to discover people to follow. I mean listen to.

Why does this exist? It's hard to say right now. Currently, it's a giant land grab, with people indiscriminately snatching up user names left and right. There's no way to tell, except by intuition, whether someone is really who they say they are on Heello, and all the juicy user names are probably taken by now. Fake @GooglePlus, fake @MarkZuckerberg, fake @YouTube, all of them have been claimed. You might as well go get yours in the event that Heello makes a name for itself. And hey, for all we know, Twitter could become an ad-riddled mess, and we'll all be glad to have Heello when that happens.

TwitPic's new terms of service should clear up that confusion. In it TwitPic explicitly states that content uploaded by a user is the copyright of the respective owner. It is not part of the public domain and is subject to how the user, not media organizations, chooses to have it disseminated.

"To clarify our ToS regarding ownership, you the user retain all copyrights to your photos and videos, it's your content," Noah Everett, founder of TwitPic, wrote on the company's blog. "Our terms state by uploading content to Twitpic you allow us to distribute that content on twitpic.com and our affiliated partners. This is standard among most user-generated content sites (including Twitter). If you delete a photo or video from Twitpic, that content is no longer viewable."

TwitPic users have fought back against the media. One photographer, Emily James of Just Do it, went so far as to invoice The Daily Mail in the United Kingdom £1,170 (British pounds, around $1,900 America dollars by today's exchange rate) for photos that it had used of a polling station during the British General Election.

New media copyright is a Wild West of usage and rules. Generally, copyright and Creative Commons are the rules for using photos taken off the Internet and social media. That does not stop thousands of blogs from using whatever photos they want and getting away with it. The difference between small blogs and big media, though, is that mainstream publications stand to make money off the photos they attach to their content.

The rule is simple. If you create it, you own the copyright. Media organizations have to give attribution and/or compensation to the producer if they use that content.

Everett says that Twitpic has 17 million registered users and adds 30,000 more each day.

Adding video is a logical next step for TwitPic, which has focused solely on allowing users to upload photos to Twitter until now. The Twitter photo sharing horse race is undoubtedly competitive. Rivals Yfrog already supports video uploads and Plixi was just acquired by social network Lockerz. Twitter also recently partnered with TwitPic and others to include inline photos in-stream in the new version of Twitter's interface.

Twitpic was subject of a recent high-profile lawsuit in which the Agence France-Presse claimed in court that by uploading photos to Twitter and Twitpic, a photographer has in effect granted a license to anyone who would like to use those photos. A US District Court ruled in December that no such claim could be made. U.S. District Court Judge William Pauley wrote in his decision says that "the provision that Twitter 'encourage[s] and permit[s] broad re-use of Content' does not clearly confer a right on other users to re-use copyrighted postings."

TwitPic has been the service of choice for a number of prominent photos that spread rapidly across the social web, from the plane that landed on the Hudson River to a hastily removed but very humanizing candid shot of pop-star Katy Perry waking up without any makeup on. It will be interesting to see if videos of comparable impact are shared on the service as well.

There are many different ways to post pictures to Twitter, but the name Twitpic has almost become a Kleenex-level verb. I can't think of any other 3rd party services built on a technology platform they don't own that can be said about.

With Twitter keeping mum, questions abound: What will this feature look like? Will it slow Twitter's already-taxed servers? And will people use it?

Twitter is keeping quiet about the possible new feature, first publicized by Mashable, but sent media this vague statement:

"We're constantly exploring features and settings. What you saw was a small test of a potential consumption setting for inline media. We show inline media on our own iPhone and Android apps."

So, Twitter, here are the top questions in our minds about the "potential" new feature.

5 Questions About The New Tweet Media

Twitter's servers have enough trouble keeping up with text tweets - will including photos and video in streams on Twitter.com result in even more Whales?

The answer will depend on the display size of the photos and video and whether Twitter is hosting the media. It will be easier for Twitter to scale if it displays only thumbnail-sized images, as it does in its iPhone and Android apps, and relies on third parties to host the media - TwitPic has a thumbnail API, for example.

"I'm not sure what their implementation looks like but it is difficult to get right. It could theoretically add more strain," said Jason Shellen, CEO of Thing Labs.

Shellen runs the media-rich Twitter Web client Brizzly, was the lead product manager in creating Google Reader and was at the startup that sold Blogger to Google back in the day. So when he says scaling hosted media display is hard to get right, he's got a solid background from which to say it.

Twitter will likely have to, at least for a time, store more images than its doing now. But this would be a feature that they'll have the ability to disable system-wide if load gets too high, much like trends and search.

Will Twitter ever host images and video themselves?

Hosting images and video and displaying them large enough to see within the stream without having to click through would keep users on Twitter.com and potentially make it easier for Twitter to monetize its 100 million-strong user base. But that would mean extra infrastructure to allow users to upload media to Twitter and extra servers to store it.

Will Twitter censor photos and images that appear on Twitter.com?

Displaying images and video as thumbnails, or possibly larger, could introduce a risque element to Twitter.com. Will the company go the route of Apple and take measures to keep users "free from porn" and other unsavory content, or will the company let the stream go uncensored, potentially opening the doors further to XXX spammers?

What does this mean for third party clients?

This is likely to be the latest incident of Twitter adding features that strains the relationship between Twitter and its third party developers, as when the company bought the mobile reader Tweetie and re-released it as an official Twitter app - unless the company can implement the new feature in a creative way.

Twitter client Brizzly displays full-size photos and videos in its stream.

Services like Twitpic host media and get revenue by displaying ads. This revenue source would disappear if users no longer need to click through to see photos or videos - unless Twitter works out special relationships with third party clients.

YFrog is the default photo service in Twitter's iPhone app, suggesting a financial agreement between the companies. Perhaps Twitter would work out similar revenue-sharing arrangements with other media services.

We haven't heard what the third party media clients are thinking, but Shellen of Brizzly, which already offers inline media display, is optimistic about the impact. "I think there is more upside in the exposure than not," he said.

Will people use it?

From the beginning, the 140-character format was loved for its simplicity. But Facebook's News Feed and nifty apps like Flipboard incorporate multimedia into an aesthetic, cohesive and arguably more usable stream of updates from your friends.

Judging from the setting Twitter briefly inserted, users will see photos and videos posted by people they're following, no choice about it. Twitter will hide media from people you aren't following by default, but you can opt-in to see that too.

Some users might say that the low character limit was what made Twitter fun - but Twitter seems to be betting that 140 characters just isn't enough anymore.

Face Tagging literally works exactly like tagging photos on Facebook. While viewing a picture, the text "In this photo:" is displayed below it with a link to begin tagging the photo. By clicking the link, users can then pinpoint people's faces in the photo and a box will appear around the face, as well as a pop-up dialogue box in which to enter the person's name and Twitter handle. Once done, users hit the "Done Tagging" button to return to normal browsing functionality - just like Facebook.

Honestly, the only difference between tagging photos on Facebook and on Twitpic is that the "Done Tagging" button appears above photos on the former and below photos on the latter. While Twitpic's new functionality is a dead lift of Facebook's long-existing photo tagging feature, it is smart to copy the social networking giant. Why re-invent the wheel? Instead, Twitpic is giving users a familiar experience, making the process easy and intuitive.

How It Doesn't Work

When users tag a face in a photo, by default they can send a rather dry tweet announcing the tag and including the user name of the person tagged, effectively working as a notification. First of all, the inability to personalize this message is a bit of a downer, but you can always just uncheck the box and send out the tweet yourself.

Additionally, the only way Twitpic alerts users that they have been tagged in a photo is via Twitter - so users could be tagged in hundreds of photos and not know it if the tagger chose not to tweet the tags. Users do have the ability to delete tags of themselves on other people's photos, but right now the only way of knowing of such photos is to be sent the tweet, which not everyone will choose to do.

In a phone interview today, Twitpic founder Noah Everett told ReadWriteWeb that additional features, like the ability to view photos you're tagged in, are in the works and should be out in a few weeks. The goal, he says, has been to launch the tagging feature and use user feedback to determine the next logical step.

What About Privacy?

That next logical step, for many users, may be privacy controls - something the new feature lacks. On Facebook, users have the ability to manage photos they have been tagged in and remove their association from a photo once-and-for-all. The only option related to photo tags for Twitpic users is the option to allow other people to tag their photos. Everett says Twitpic is looking into possible privacy controls, such as a blanket rule preventing anyone from tagging you, or specific user-based bans to avoid those "crazy ex-girlfriends", as he put it.

Personally, I use Twitpic mainly as a means to an end - I upload photos to the service for sharing on Twitter via a mobile application, which means I don't visit the Twitpic web interface too frequently. How am I supposed to know when I'm tagged in a photo if the user tagging me chooses not to tweet it? Even if I visit the Twitpic homepage, there is no way for me to view an aggregated list of photos I am tagged in and no system for notifying me of such photos.

Everett says the company is considering ways to notify users, including email alterts, but hopes that eventually app developers will add the functionality using Twitpic's API. I guess the good thing is if someone decides to surreptitiously tag me in a photo, for now the general public has no real great way of finding it either.

An Impending Headache for Data Fans?

The other important thing to note from the launch of Twitpic's Face Tagging functionality is that it is a new stand-alone platform on a third-party Twitter application. What that means is that compatibility between networks is completely up to Twitpic. When other Twitter-based photo sharing apps add this functionality (which they are likely to do), it will be nearly impossible for users to effectively aggregate their tagged photos (and other meta-data) across platforms.

I spoke with Thomas Vander Wal, father of the phrase "folksonomy" which refers to collective tagging of meta-data, and he shared some interesting insights into this situation.

"Since others have done similar things on other platforms (Facebook, Flickr) the [intellectual property] is fuzzy and Twitpic can't claim it, so others are free to jump in," Vander Wal told ReadWriteWeb. "It would be in Twitter's best interest to build a central aggregation point for this."

This is exactly why Twitter is rolling out annotations, which have been testing recently and should be out soon. The annotations will create a standardized framework for third-party apps to build from, making interoperability between services much easier. Everett said he actually spoke with people from Twitter today about "coming together" and "rolling [tagging functionality] into annotations."

Strangely, however, Twitter mentioned in April that it planned on having "trending annotations" and letting developers battle for standardization. It would make sense that meta-data for tagged photos could be added to Twitter's annotations, and if the services adopted the standard, aggregation would be simple.

If not, then the entrepreneurial community, "somebody like PixelPipe" as Vander Wal suggested, would need to create another third-party Twitter service that would handle this aggregation - not an ideal solution going forward. We can't blame Twitpic for this fate: what the company is doing is good in terms of pushing the platform forward. We can, however, bring up the privacy issues Twitpic has raised with their new service and its apparent lack of controls, but then again, it is a brand new feature and more functionality is on the way soon.

Twitter has acquired two other companies so far, that we know of. Search engine and sentiment analysis service Summize became Twitter's own search engine and Values of N sold its assets so engineer Rael Dornfest could be brought into the company. Here are ten other startups we think that Twitter should consider acquiring next. Which kind of company would you most like to see become part of Twitter itself? We've got a poll below.

Some of these we think are likely acquisitions, some less so. In making this list we considered both functionality that would be helpful to have added to Twitter's own site and technology that would be worth buying instead of just building in-house. Whenever a platform company builds technology that a number of other startups offer, there is a risk of scaring other people away from investing in development that the platform could just reproduce. Acquisitions of startups on a platform probably increase the appeal of development though, as it's a chance to get in on the game.

Quite Likely, if It Hasn't Happened Already

Bit.ly is the most full-featured and popular URL shortener on the market right now and was recently selected as Twitter's own shortener of choice, dethroning TinyURL. Bit.ly offers all kinds of smart analytics, from real-time click tracking to semantic analysis of topic keywords from the links that people tweet.

One trusted industry source speaking on the condition of anonymity told us that Bit.ly servers "were moved into Twitter's racks months ago in preparation for this change" [of becoming the default shortener]. Bit.ly is becoming too important to Twitter to keep that functionality outside the company's own shop and the two companies share some investors. We will not be surprised at all if a Bit.ly acquisition by Twitter is announced sometime in the near future.

Could Happen...

Tweetmeme is another fast growing Twitter analytics service that tracks sharing on the service. With another chunk of new features just added today, the service is looking a whole lot like "Feedburner for Twitter" but with even more viral distribution possibilities. The Tweetmeme API is quite interesting and could complement Bit.ly quite well.

Twitpic is a popular way to share images on Twitter. The site faces a strong challenge from ImageShack's YFrog, but independent Twitpic would be a cheaper acquisition and is already well known among Twitter users. (Twitter should probably look at Enjoysthin.gs; it's got the best user experience.) An increase in imagery on Twitter would probably offer the company a lot more advertising real-estate.

Tweepz is a fascinating Twitter search engine that acts like a directory that lets you parse your results using various metrics gleaned from Twitter. Check out this search, for example. Twitter could benefit from making this kind of search available to users, advertisers and researchers - and Tweepz has already built it. See also Twazzup, another company doing interesting things with Twitter data.

Longer Shots

An iPhone app company could be a good buy for Twitter; there's certainly plenty of options. M.Twitter.com is a good mobile service already but someone specializing in super high-quality Twitter apps for the iPhone, Android and Pre could be good to bring in house. It could be AteBits, makers of Tweetie. There may not be enough reason for Twitter to buy one of these companies, though.

A desktop Twitter app company could help Twitter increase user engagement. Many of the most serious Twitter users (though not all) swear by desktop access. Twitter could acquire the most popular and arguably most innovative desktop app, Tweetdeck, or it could bring Seesmic in house. Tweetdeck would be cheap and shares investors with Twitter. Desktop apps may be too limited in appeal to be a compelling acquisition target.

Geo-location could be a good feature to add to Twitter. Search by user location could be made much more meaningful and the list of things that could be done with it is very long. Brightkite is popular and well developed, Shizzow is pretty and wouldn't be expensive. On the other hand, browsers themselves will likely all become more location aware in the near future and Twitter may be satisfied with its current location data.

A semantics company could bring structure to the Tweets, making them more useful and easier to advertise against. Right now links Tweeted are semantically analyzed by Reuters' Calais and sent to Bit.ly, but we wouldn't be surprised if Twitter was interested in scooping up a small semantics shop and helping it scale so that analysis was being done in house. Twitter may feel like semantics don't need to get that close to consumer users, though. (Disclosure, Calais is a ReadWriteWeb sponsor.)

Topify is a widely loved service that intercepts your new Twitter follower notification emails and sends you much more useful ones. It's great but probably too easy for Twitter to just reproduce itself.

FriendFeed plus Twitter would be a match made in heaven. It would be an engineering powerhouse. It would be a step towards mainstream user adoption of FriendFeed, a service that can't make up its mind which end of the sophistication spectrum it's targeting. It's also quite unlikely to happen. If there's one related startup we can imagine turning down a Twitter acquisition offer, it's probably FriendFeed. (Though the investment-laden and highly ambitious OneRiot is a close second.) Nonetheless, it would be awesome if FriendFeed's cross-network aggregation, threaded conversations, groups, media support, search and more joined forces with Twitter.

Ultimately, it may be most likely that Twitter's next acquisition will be something vapid. A service that aggregates shopping Tweets, or celebrity Tweets, or something else that will fall short of taking advantage of the Twitter platform's huge potential to change the world. Twitter staff makes relatively simple use of its own service, so hoping that it will acquire companies that make it all the more powerfully sophisticated may be an early adopter's pipe dream. [Update: After some discussion this afternoon, I am thinking it's time to reconsider this position I've held for some time. Twitter staff is not full of dummies, I'm sure, and it has probably been inappropriate of me to write as if that's the case.]

Maybe not, though. We wouldn't be shocked to see Twitter pick up at least a few of the companies above. What do you think? Are there other services you'd like to see become part of the Twitter team even more than the above? It's a wild and woolly micro-content ecosystem out there - anything could happen.

You can find ReadWriteWeb on Twitter, as well as the entire RWW Team: Marshall Kirkpatrick, Bernard Lunn, Alex Iskold, Sarah Perez, Frederic Lardinois, Doug Coleman, Jolie O'Dell, Dana Oshiro , Lidija Davis and Steven Walling.