Utterz, best known as an audio messaging platform has been thrust back on the microblogging radar today with news that the site now supports Twitter like direct messaging features.
Kristen Nicole at Mashable headlines the changes as “ New Utterz Features to take on Twitter? ” and notes new features such as “Utterz messages directly to friends using the “@” symbol, personal URLs, and peer-to-peer SMS notifications.”
Until today I’ve never used the service, so I signed up and gave it a shot. My first impressions, plus a quick walk through in the video above. It’s an interesting platform in that Utterz mashes concepts we are familiar with on services such as Twitter and Seesmic and marries them on the one site. As a convenient, multi-media capturing service it’s good value. As a direct competitor to Twitter…I’m not so sure. The site still lacks a huge community, the magical ingredient that makes or breaks any service in the microblogging space. There are plenty of cross-overs with and into Twitter and other platforms however, and as a stand alone value add its a stronger proposition.
An audio embed below, with a correction to the screencast (I wasn’t sure about length when I recorded it), max recording time in 10 minutes.