Social media just got faster. Immediacy is one of the Six Valuable Attributes of Social Media. We’ve recently had an obsession with brevity in the form of Twitter, and shortened URLs for example. The ability to communicate about something as it happens, as opposed to hours or even days later, is a big part of the appeal of social media. And the iPhone 3GS and Posterous represent the latest advances in real time communications.

Yesterday afternoon I was having trouble with my Flip video, which I haven’t used in a long time, and complaining about it on Twitter. Erick Schmidt commented (in two separate tweets):

“Video has become inherently social. Sharing short clips *fast* is threshold feature…Was just talking w/someone who said his Flip was going to stay in the drawer w/advent of iPhone 3GS - impulse video is key.”

The Flip support people have been VERY helpful, but the camera isn’t working yet. So much for immediacy. When I want to “grab” something from the world around and me and share it, I want to do it now. Posting an image or video in near realtime is the online equivalent of saying, “hey, there’s an awesome Dodge Charger outside of Starbucks.” The longer it takes me to share that information, the less interesting it becomes.

I’ve already talked about Posterous which is an amazing tool that lets you post almost any kind of file to almost any social network, blog, etc simply by emailing it to your unique Posterous address. I used it to post an iPhone Audio Memo to my blog and it worked flawlessly. There are plenty of sites that allow you to upload/record audio and then link to your blog or embed, but if you can eliminate steps, simplify and post faster, why not?

The iPhone 3GS has solved the video problem. You might not have known there was a video problem, but there was. There are too many steps to recording a video, moving it from device to device, getting it ready to upload, and uploading it.  I have had many camera phones and many digital cameras but it’s only since I got my (original) iPhone that I have posted images to my blog and Twitter via Flickr and Twitpic.

The breakthrough has come through the ubiquity of smart phones, and let’s face it, the iPhone is the smartest, and thanks to Apple’s maniacal focus on the user interface and simplicity of use, it’s the platform of choice for mobile social media. For further proof, look at how mobile video uploads have taken off on YouTube. According to a post on the YouTube blog by Dwipal Desai and Mia Quagliarello, “In the last six months, we’ve seen uploads from mobile phones to YouTube jump 1700%; just since last Friday, when the iPhone 3GS came out, uploads increased by 400% a day.” (Thanks Steve Rubel for the link.)

Now, if AT&T could offer true, always on, always fast 3G broadband, we’d see a real revolution in mobile streaming, mobile videoconferencing, and other applications that were out of reach until very recently.

Tags: iPhone 3GS, Posterous, Flip, impulse, YouTube