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It seems like everybody’s doing some design update these days. First Facebook, then Mashable, and now Flickr is joining the redesign craze.

Today, Flickr released a sneak preview of its new design. Its intent is to roll this new layout sitewide in the next few weeks. By clicking the “sneak preview” link at the bottom of your home page, a shower of (very cool) Flickr balls fly from the heavens and transform your home page.

In the current version of the home page, you are able to get to your photostream, upload photos, find new friends, or simply browse through uploads. The current version does its job, but Flickr’s new version has reorganized that information into a simple and social-friendly layout.

The change is not drastic. You still have all of the basic features of the old home page, but the emphasis is clearly on the social features of Flickr. Contacts is a new section near the top which acts like a news feed for recent photos uploaded by your friends. Explore is a dynamic section which changes on every refresh. It comes up with everything from The Commons to Flickr Groups to recent photos from the entire community.

Explore seems to be the largest change to the design, but it is not a major design change overall. It seems clear that Flickr wants to promote the use of its social features and the best photos from the community, rather than simply using Flickr as an online photo album. In that regard, the new design succeeds in promoting new content, connections, and staying fresh while not changing so much that the userbase would revolt.

Did I also mention the cool flying Flickr balls you get when you switch over?

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Just when I thought we had the video sharing spectrum covered with applications like Qik, 12seconds and Seesmic, along comes Viddler’s entry into the fray with 15seconds. Viddler’s 15seconds is a video micro-sharing service that connects to Twitter for you, so that you can leave your friends and associates the video equivalent of a 140 character note.

12seconds is the closest to the Viddler version of video micro-sharing, but Viddler already takes the win here right out of the starting gate. The reason for this is that Viddler’s 15seconds makes it easier than 12seconds to share your micro video with your Twitter friends. As already proven by the unbridled success of Twitter itself, people love “easy” and instant gratification. Do one thing, but make it simple to use and share with others, and you get our immediate attention.

12seconds uses the “Share This” plug-in to send your 12seconds mini video to various social bookmarking sites, but Twitter is not listed. Twitter is the main focus of the online social movement right now. Not having Twitter integration these days can be a deal breaker for the success of an application. Viddler’s integration with Twitter is a major asset.

In keeping with the Viddler brand and making it competitive with Qik and Seesmic for a quick video note, 15seconds includes a way to leave comments on the mini videos. Interactive videos have proven a huge hit with various services, including Qik, Seesmic, and even YouTube. With both comments and Twitter streaming, this should be a real contender against other services.

15seconds also integrates your @usernames from Twitter, as well as #hashtags. The #hashtags integration will be popular to many, though it doesn’t help me much (I seem to always get a 404 when using hashtags, but that’s a story for another post). It’s the embedded @ replies that are really useful to the truly Twitter involved though. To be able to carry on a full conversation with a Twitter friend in video while getting comments from others should be well received.

Overall, I think Viddler conceived of a nice service to compliment its existing videos. I personally see myself continuing to use Qik from my phone, a service which also posts simultaneously to Twitter and Seesmic, and Seesmic from my office for the longer video length and use of my existing Seesmic network, but I think many people will flock to this Viddler solution as a unique way to micro converse online.

Update 9/10: My apologies to the folks at 12seconds and my thanks to the sharp Mashable reader base. It seems between the time I checked out 12seconds a while back and now they have indeed included Twitter streaming, making it more of a direct head to head issue right down to the similar names.

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There has been a lot written over the past year or so about how the time is coming when social media tools like Twitter will become not just the toys of the early adopters of the tech blogosphere, but break through and become a fixture of the mainstream media. With its scaling problems seemingly behind it, Twitter may finally be ready to cross that line between the techies and the rest of the web using world.

This was especially apparent during Hurricane Gustav’s visit to the Gulf Coast and the reporting being done by CNN’s Rick Sanchez; who apparently discovered Twitter for the first time and made it an integral part of his reporting. This has gone over so well that CNN will be having a show on the weekends with Rick built around Twitter; called appropriately enough - Rick Sanchez Direct.

On the other hand, Rick’s fellow anchor Anderson Cooper; who was actually on Twitter before Rick, seems to be using it only as a way to funnel out headlines. Rick Sanchez’s involvement has been full tilt to the point that he and his producer had to get Twitter to lift the following limits for his account. In contrast Anderson is following seven people.

This isn’t the only time that the Twitterverse has seen famous people in media - both old and new - who have signed up and then proceeded to only broadcast what they were doing but then don’t follow enough people to be able to use it as a way to have conversations. There is no denying that Twitter is making some really deep inroads into mainstream media, but is that media really grasping the principal behind things like Twitter? For every person like Rick Sanchez there are a growing number that are like Anderson Cooper; and those two men are from the same news organization.

As we move forward in this new social media world and tools like Twitter become more common place in organizations like CNN one has to wonder if they really understand how these tools are meant to be used. Other than the rare person with the organizations who get it, the general idea seems to be to use these tools in the familiar broadcast style that they are use to.

One has to wonder if they really understand that people are getting tired of being broadcasted at and rather prefer for the medium to become a two way street. It only takes looking at the list compiled by GraphicDesignr.net of mainstream media organizations and journalists using Twitter at this point to see that the actual number of them actually using Twitter as a conversation tool is pretty small. The vast majority of those on the list are stuck in the broadcasting mode of using Twitter; if they have even used it beyond signing up.

So while it would seem that Twitter is all the rage right now, we really need to look a little deeper and see how it is being used. At this point in time it seems that some do really get it but for the rest it appears to be just a new way to broadcast at people. In other words - business as usual.

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