TweetPhoto is expanding beyond Twitter, which is a smart move considering the current social networking environment. The massive changes to the service of course warrants a major name change, seeing as the company will no longer be pigeon-holed as a Twitter app.

The new name is Plixi, which I found to be pretty darn cute. Turns out, that was the idea CEO and founder Sean Callahan had behind the name change, as nearly two-thirds of its user base is female (by the way, that’s generally becoming the case for several social networking and media-sharing tools, particularly those that interact from a location-based, mobile vantage point).

And what else do girls like to do? Socialize. While TweetPhoto already supported media-sharing outside of Facebook, the name change and expansion has brought on some new features to the Plixi service. You can now share photos based on common friends, places and events, through its website.

One thing that hasn’t changed is Plixi’s focus on API’s and mobile apps. This means Plixi’s iPhone and Android apps will see some updates as well. Expanding past Twitter and taking a more location-based approach to its service means that Plixi’s third party apps will have more options around its sharing mechanisms.

This has been an important area of growth and opportunity for TweetPhoto in the past, and moving forward with the new Plixi service is really setting the company up to become more of a social network. Orienting users around their photos, based on location and common interests, isn’t a new concept, but it is receiving some refreshed interest now that Facebook Places and other initiatives are emerging on the scene.

“We have always been a location-aware service, and now we have enhanced our service to allow sharing around places and events in a new ways. Users can now check in to any place or event with a picture,” said Rodney Rumford, co-founder and head of product management at Plixi. “We imagined a way to collectively capture all the experiences from the same place or event instead of having these memories scattered all over the web,” added Sean Callahan, Plixi co-founder and CEO. “We are going to change the way people share, connect and consume their memories with others.”

With this space beginning to heat up from every perspective you can imagine, Plixi’s re-branding is a necessary step in the longer road towards growth and large-scale success. See here for full feature updates and details on the new Plixi.