Twango was an

online media In mass communication, digital media is any communication media that operates in conjunction with various encoded machine-readable data formats. can be created, viewed, distributed, modified, listened to, and preserved on a digital electronic ...

sharing site that supported multiple file types such as photos, video, audio, and documents. Founded in 2004 by Jim Laurel, Philip Carmichael, Randy Kerr, Serena Glover and Michael Laurel in Redmond, Washington, it provided users a means of repurposing their media, including sharing, editing, organizing and categorizing. In addition, Twango saved all the original media and its

metadata Metadata (or metainformation) is "data that provides information about other data", but not the content of the data itself, such as the text of a message or the image itself. There are many distinct types of metadata, including: * Descriptive ...

(this includes, but is not limited to,

IPTC The International Press Telecommunications Council (IPTC), based in London, United Kingdom, is a consortium of the world's major news agencies, other news providers and news industry vendors and acts as the global List of technical standard organis ...

and

Exif Exchangeable image file format (officially Exif, according to JEIDA/JEITA/CIPA specifications) is a standard that specifies formats for images, sound, and ancillary tags used by digital cameras (including smartphones), scanners and other system ...

). Non-members were free to browse the site, however only members could upload media to the site. Sign up for a basic account was free, and provided 250 megabytes of upload bandwidth a month. Twango was acquired by

Nokia Nokia Corporation is a Finnish multinational corporation, multinational telecommunications industry, telecommunications, technology company, information technology, and consumer electronics corporation, originally established as a pulp mill in 1 ...

in July 2007. In February 2008, Nokia rebranded Twango as ''Share on Ovi''. With the rebranding, the 250 megabyte upload limit was removed. Subsequently, Share on Ovi was rebranded to Ovi Share to conform with the other Ovi services, such as Ovi Mail, Ovi Maps and Ovi Music. On 7 March 2012, Nokia announced that Ovi Share will be discontinued and closed on 30 May 2012.

Notable Features

Channels

Twango users organize their media in containers known as channels. A user's entire media collection is stored in what is known as "My Media". Channels represent a cross-section of "My Media". The same piece of media can appear in multiple channels, giving a different context to said media. For example, a picture of friends at a party could appear in a user's "friends" channel as well as in the user's "party" channel. Twango members can subscribe to a channel, receiving notifications when new media has been uploaded to a channel or when new comments have been added. Each channel can also be specified as public or private. If it is specified as private it can only be accessed by invitation. Users can also create open channels which allow other users to upload their own content.

Upload methods

Twango members can upload their media in a variety of ways. Users can upload via the website, either through a basic upload interface where the user browses for files to upload one at a time, or through a web based drag and drop uploader which enables them to upload multiple files at once by dragging them from a folder on their machine and onto the browser (this requires

ActiveX ActiveX is a deprecated software framework created by Microsoft that adapts its earlier Component Object Model (COM) and Object Linking and Embedding (OLE) technologies for content downloaded from a network, particularly from the World Wide W ...

Java Java is one of the Greater Sunda Islands in Indonesia. It is bordered by the Indian Ocean to the south and the Java Sea (a part of Pacific Ocean) to the north. With a population of 156.9 million people (including Madura) in mid 2024, proje ...

). In addition to browser based uploading, Twango also supports uploading through email, mobile phone, and the Windows web publishing wizard.

Twidgets

A twango twidget is an embedded snippet of code (currently

Flash Flash, flashes, or FLASH may refer to: Arts, entertainment, and media Fictional aliases * The Flash, several DC Comics superheroes with super speed: ** Flash (Jay Garrick) ** Barry Allen ** Wally West, the first Kid Flash and third adult Flash ...

JavaScript JavaScript (), often abbreviated as JS, is a programming language and core technology of the World Wide Web, alongside HTML and CSS. Ninety-nine percent of websites use JavaScript on the client side for webpage behavior. Web browsers have ...

) that can be added to a user's blog. For example, a user can embed a Flash ticker on his or her

blog A blog (a Clipping (morphology), truncation of "weblog") is an informational website consisting of discrete, often informal diary-style text entries also known as posts. Posts are typically displayed in Reverse chronology, reverse chronologic ...

which will display all the media from a channel. Twango also has a webcam widget which can be embedded in blogs and provides in-place webcam comments from viewers.

Feeds

Movies and audio are condensed and played back via a Flash-based media player, but media can also be downloaded in the format it was originally uploaded in. In addition, Twango does not implement any technology to block copyrighted material, but instead relies on the community to "flag" inappropriate media. Media that has reached a certain flagging threshold is then automatically removed. Twango supports various feeds, including channel feeds, most recent media feeds, and most popular feeds. It supports RSS 2.0, ATOM 0.3, and ATOM 1.0

Twango Mobile

Twango Mobile provides an XHTML web site for people with compatible mobile browsers. This mobile site gives access to photos, videos, audio and other media on Twango, as well as some interactivity including the ability to add comments and share media to mobile numbers and email addresses.

Acquisition by Nokia

In July 2007, Nokia and Twango announced that Nokia was acquiring substantially all of the assets of Twango. Shortly after the acquisition, Nokia announced that it was moving into the services field with the introduction of Ovi. The Twango software was one of the first elements of the Ovi platform introduced by Nokia. On 7 March 2012, Nokia announced that Ovi Share will be discontinued and closed on 30 May 2012.

References

{{Nokia Nokia services File sharing services Internet properties established in 2004 American social networking websites Former video hosting services