Note: This story was embargoed until 10am Pacific, but as usual, the app still hasn't gone live in the store. This is becoming standard procedure these days and Apple is doing a disservice to both the developers and the press by not giving developers a clearer idea about when a new application will actually appear in the store.

Update (5:30pm): the app is now available in the App Store.

Earlier this year, 12seconds announced tighter integration with Twitter and this app clearly shows this. Once you have uploaded your video, a message will be posted to your Twitter feed.

One nice aspect of the app is that it is extremely easy to use. You just tilt the iPhone sideways and the recorder automatically opens. After recording a video, you can play it, retake it, or delete it.

In a future update, 12seconds also plans to integrate Facebook Connect. This will give users the ability to share video on both Twitter and Facebook. The company also plans to release a few more iPhone 3GS apps in the near future.

A number of other Twitter video services like TwitVid already offer iPhone apps (iTunes link). 12seconds, however, is one of the largest players in this space - especially now that Seesmic has decided to shift its focus away from its video service.

No Growth

It's important to note, though, that Seesmic plans to keep its video service running for the time being, but unless we see a major shift in how users perceive 'video conversations,' we have to wonder if this kind of service has any real future, especially given the asynchronous nature of Seesmic in a time where real-time conversations and video streaming, even from mobile devices, are becoming the norm. In his video, Le Meur also notes that other Twitter-based video services aren't growing right now either, though he hopes that video will be ready to grow again at some point in the future.

Service Still Up, But Completely Deemphasized

We definitely have to give Le Meur credit for keeping the community informed, though. Unlike imeem, which is shutting down parts of its service in the next few days, Seesmic is keeping its service up and running, and the team is communicating with the Seesmic community.

Note: tip of the hat to Allen Stern, who first noticed these changes.

We at ReadWriteWeb have had an awesome time gathering video content lately. We love it so much that we plan to do it a lot more. One of the discussions in the back channels has been about where to post our video content, and after considering a whole boatload of factors and testing several services, we've started posting content on our brand-new Vimeo account.

In the past, team members have used YouTube, Viddler, Blip, and a handful of other video services. We loved YouTube's HD, large-file capabilities, but we hated the media player and the YouTube watermark that ended up all over our lovely content. We adored Blip's customizable player, but our longer, in-depth interview videos were a bit too large for that format.

Our Vimeo Plus account will allow us to upload a healthy-to-ridiculous amount of HD video each week, and the speed of uploading and processing for Plus accounts is mind-reelingly fast. We'll also get to make widgets from our content. And we definitely love the very social component of groups and channels. We couldn't be more excited, and we hope to have a long and productive experience with Vimeo.

As a side note, this post isn't meant as an endorsement of Vimeo; different products work better for different purposes, as noted by many Twitter followers last week.

Another factor behind our decision was the surprisingly enthusiastic user response to Vimeo when we conducted an informal Twitter poll. Since you guys like the Vimeo platform and community so much, we hope you'll add us and check out our social media channel and our RWW group. We've added a few videos to the channel and group so far; if you have a video you'd like us to add to our curated content, just email us.

And as always, suggestions on how we can improve our video coverage are welcomed; just leave your erudite ponderings in the comments.