TwitVid Founders: New Kids on the Tech Block

By Rima Abdelkader

February 9, 2010

Microsoft pioneer Bill Gates. Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg. Now, TwitVid.com’s Mohamed Adham and Adil Lalani. Working inside their dorm rooms at the University of Waterloo in Canada, Adham and Lalani developed a fast and easy technology for people all around the world to share video.

Twitvid.com was launched last summer, and has already been used by celebrities Demi Moore, Mary J. Blige, Baron Davis, and even by bands Coldplay and Nine Inch Nails. Adham said he always “had a fascination with technology and its ability to positively change society.” Here, Adham explains how he and his co-founder came up with the idea, and why there’s been such a demand for their product online.

Twitvid.com and the Twitvid iPhone App are two of your newest inventions. Tell me more about these products and how users benefit from them.

TwitVid.com allows our users to upload and view videos on Twitter sooner than any other app. Our technology allows Twitter followers and other social network friends to begin viewing videos even before the uploading process is complete. There are TwitVid applications available for the iPhone and Blackberry. Twitter users can also add video to their tweets via TwitVid.com or a custom e-mail address.

Our members can also automatically broadcast their videos and tweets to their Facebook, MySpace and YouTube profiles via TwitVid’s AutoShare feature. With many of our members present on multiple social networks, this is an easy way for them to update many sites at once.

Essentially, we provide an easy, reliable, and fast way of getting your video out to the world, in real-time.

Who are some of Twitvid.com’s well-known users?

Celebrities continue to flock to TwitVid posting videos for their fans, as a way to become even more interactive on Twitter. Current TwitVid.com celebrities include Coldplay, Nine Inch Nails, Donnie Wahlberg, Dane Cook, The NBA, Alexa Chung (MTV host), The Los Angeles Lakers, Ciara, Demi Moore, Mary J. Blige, and Baron Davis (NBA player), to name a few. We highlight our top celebrities on the TwitVid.com homepage.

How did you both know that a fast and easy way to upload video is what users wanted from the market?

There is a trend on the web indicating that people are looking for the fastest and easiest way to share information in near-real time with others. We saw an opportunity with the growing availability of video on phones (such as the iPhone 3GS) and the growing popularity of Twitter as the leading platform for real-time information sharing. When we launched Twitvid, the market responded positively and the number of members we have continues to grow.

How did you both push forward with your entrepreneurial goal of fulfilling that demand? How did you both come up with the idea, conceptualize it and ultimately produce this tool for Twitter users and Twitvid iPhone App uers to use?

My co-founder Adil Lalani and I started developing the technology behind TwitVid.com in 2007 in the dorm rooms while we were students at the University of Waterloo. Our goal was to provide the fastest and easiest way for people to share videos with friends, since we were frustrated with the services that were out there because they wouldn’t let us share our videos fast enough. We left college in May 2007 with the plan to implement a technology for near real-time video sharing that would enable fast and easy video transfers. We co-founded EatLime, Inc. in 2008, and officially launched the TwitVid.com video uploading service and website in May 2009.

What is your advice for someone wanting to be an online entrepreneur in these tough economic times? What does it take for someone to excel at producing some of the products you’ve created?

My advice for anyone wanting to be an online entrepreneur in these touch economic times is to differentiate by building excellent products in terms of quality and user experience. Fast execution is also key, and so is iterating fast based on the market’s reaction to your product. Surviving during a recession requires that you are much better than you would need to be during good economic times.