Thwapr adds more video sharing, higher quality, still no need to sign up

In December I wrote about Thwapr, a video-sharing service focused on mobile videos. Instead of building apps for smartphones, Thwapr chose to make its videos auto-playable on as many phones — smart or dumb — as possible without any software downloads, including apps.
This week, Thwapr has added one-click Facebook and Twitter sharing to video clips hosted at Thwapr, as well as a “Thwap It” button to share over its own social network. The catch is: There’s no catch. You needn’t sign up with Thwapr, either to share or to receive a clip. In that way, Thwapr is just like YouTube.
CTO Eric Hoffert gave me a demo over the phone. As you can see on this test page, all you need do is click the Facebook or Twitter button to send a tagged link and comment to your own network. The Thwapit button lets you send a message to someone else’s mobile phone, with a link to a video that will automatically play on more than 200 models of phone.
The most serendipitous part of the service, Hoffert says, is that many recipients aren’t aware that their phone can play video clips until they click: “On a BlackBerry 8330 or a Droid on Verizon, Thwapr serves streaming video in RTSP format. On a more modestly powered Motorola Razr feature phone on Sprint, it serves a downloadable 3GP video file delivered via HTTP. Thwapr knows the pixel resolution of your phone’s screen and whether or not it’s a touchscreen. We resize the video to fit.”
The latest upgrade improves video quality as well. “If you shoot video on a BlackBerry,” Hoffert said, “it’ll play on some other phones with higher resolution than BlackBerry supports. On Android, we’ve just doubled our video quality. It looks great.”
Thwapr was founded in 2007 with funding of $3 million from angel investors . The company is headquartered in New York City and has 15 employees.

Companies: Thwapr