GigaOM » Video sharing

Embattled video startup Color says it won’t fade to black (for now)

Ryan Kim — Wed, 17 Oct 2012 20:00:08 +0000

UPDATED: Video-sharing startup Color has been a popular punching bag after reports said CEO and co-founder Bill Nguyen was on sabbatical and workers were moving on. So when a report surfaced Wednesday saying the video-sharing company was “winding down” its business, it fueled fresh schadenfreude for the brash startup that came out of the gate last year with $41 million in funding.

But the company isn’t dead yet, said a spokesperson. “Color is not shutting down,” the spokesperson told me.

UPDATE II: The Next Web, quoting trusted sources, reported that Apple is about to buy Color for a price in the high double digits. Apple bought Nguyen’s previous startup Lala for $80 million and Apple SVP of internet services and software Eddy Cue knows Nguyen. (Original story continues below)

The report of Color’s closure was first reported by Venturebeat, which cited a company email sent to employees. In it, the company apparently announced to employees that “last week, the Board and major shareholders voted to wind down the company.” But we’ve heard from a couple of people who said that employees there have not received the email. The company is now trying to investigate where the email information may have come from.

UPDATE I: Venturebeat said the email was sent by Color’s vice president of finance Andrew Urushima and that it can’t confirm that more than one employee received it.

Make no mistake, Color is going through a lot of upheavals. Nguyen hasn’t been with the company for about three months, though he continues to retain the title CEO. The size of the staff has fallen from about 50 people earlier in the spring to a staff somewhere in the 30s now. And morale took a hit after Nguyen stepped back from day to day duties, sources have told me.

But the company has a deal with Verizon signed in May to embed its mobile video sharing app on certain Android devices. I’m told that the deal is still in place and Color is working on new product plans. It’s still possible, of course, that Color or its backers could call it quits all the same. But a lack of money probably isn’t the issue. Nguyen said earlier this year that Color had enough money for five or six years.

That’s as a result of Color’s huge $41 million funding last year from Sequoia, which was trumpeted at the same time it launched what was originally a photo sharing app. The app’s failure to catch on with consumers and the cocky promotion-style of Nguyen made Color the startup everyone loved to hate. But does it mean Color is doomed? It might be ultimately if no one can make Color’s pivot toward live video sharing work. And now with more founders stepping back, it doesn’t inspire a lot of confidence. But it sounds like people will have to wait a little more before they break out their favorite Color jokes.

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Cliptamatic combines Hulu+Twitter for sharing short mobile clips

Ryan Kim — Fri, 28 Sep 2012 14:17:23 +0000

Video can be a great conversation starter and the right clip, from a movie or TV show, can often sum up feelings that words can’t always describe. But getting the right video to share, especially on a mobile device, can be hard.

But New York City startup GorillaSpot Media has created a new mobile video app called Cliptamatic that looks to combine some of the short communications and sharing of Twitter with branded premium video like Hulu. The goal is to make concise premium video a kind of language that inspires reactions and gets people talking. The app, available for the iPhone, will start with a limited selection of election news, sports and comedy clips, usually no more than 30 seconds long, but will soon expand to movies and TV content.

Here’s how it works: users can choose to follow sports clips from the Big Ten Network to start, subscribing to their favorite conference team’s channel or they can choose from a variety of 2012 election issues, which includes curated content selected by GorillaSpot. There’s also comedy content from Latham Entertainment, which owns the Kings of Comedy and other properties and provides channels for Bernie Mac, George Lopez, Steve Harvey and other comedians. When new clips become available, users get alerted based on their subscriptions. They can also follow other users and see what they’re sharing or find what’s popular in the Cliptamatic network.

When a user finds a video they like, they can easily share it out to Facebook or the Cliptamatic feed with their own caption. The videos will run inside Facebook. Twitter integration is coming soon.

Cliptamatic has limited utility at launch because of its smaller library of content. And if it stays this small, it’s not going to be very useful for people. But there’s reason to believe this can be a more widely used tool because of GorillaSpot’s experience in the premium video world. GorillaSpot, for the last five years, has worked with studios and TV networks, such as Paramount, ABC, CBS, MTV, HBO, AMC, MLB and others, for its products, which include SceneWeaver, a video mashup application, and ReelCards, which provides online premium video e-cards. The company plans on rolling out film and TV content in the coming weeks and months, with many TV clips uploaded within minutes of their airing.

Athan Stephanopoulos, CEO & Founder of GorillaSpot told me GorillaSpot has already done a lot of heavy lifting with content owners and shown them how they can monetize their clips in a safe way. Now, he believes many more will be interested in teaming up on Cliptamatic. Some TV networks may release clips, with short 3-second post rolls that promote a current show. Other movie studios may just want to point to their archive of content. And some media companies may just want to get in now to help build Cliptamatic up into a larger sharing platform.

Stephanopoulos believes that there’s a ripe opportunity in creating a social video sharing service that is built specifically with mobile in mind, so consumption and distribution is easy. And he said premium content is capable of expressing people’s feelings in ways that user-generated content can’t convey.

“We’re trying to create a simple experience for finding content that’s relevant to you that helps you elevate your social conversation,” Stephanopoulos said. “Hulu is like a full meal while YouTube is like an appetizer, but we’re trying to provide the best bite of a meal.”

I think there’s definitely a place for Cliptamatic if it can score the right content. Video is a great conversation starter and tool for expression but I hesitate to use it sometimes because a clip may be too long or I can’t find the right video. And doing it from a mobile device makes it even harder. But if I could find the perfect Will Farrell quote from Anchorman or an illuminating clip from the upcoming debates that, I would love to share it at the right time. Movieclips has some great clips, which are available through YouTube as well, but they’re often a couple minutes long or more and there’s no mobile app.

We’re already used to sharing longer videos on Twitter and Facebook but I think we could see a lot more of that if the content was better packaged for quick sharing. And with the popularity of gifs these days, we’re understanding how short video moments are becoming a form of expression.

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Video star Socialcam sells to Autodesk for $60M

Ryan Kim — Tue, 17 Jul 2012 13:33:48 +0000

Socialcam, the popular though sometimes spammy video sharing app, is taking its services to Autodesk, which bought the small startup for $60 million. Autodesk, known for its design and engineering software, expects to close the deal in the third quarter and is reportedly set on keeping Socialcam independent.

Socialcam spun out of Justin.tv last year and managed to attract a lot of users with its ability to easily edit and share videos. The mobile app has generated 16 million downloads on iOS and Android. Socialcam has 55 million active monthly users on Facebook, making it the top Facebook app.

Socialcam’s Facebook success, however, was marred by allegations that it was too aggressive in sharing content using Facebook’s Open Graph and was forcing people to download the app to view videos. Socialcam’s active usage has waned since first exploding in April, but it’s still well ahead of rival Viddy. Both were locked in a race to become the so-called “Instagram of video.”

Autodesk said it would like to use Socialcam’s services to help its professionals and consumers share design ideas and make its existing technology more accessible to users. It plans on investing in the platform to help it scale and create more tools for users.

Socialcam, a Y Combinator graduate, raised a seed round in April from a list of big name investors. But the company has remained small with just four employees. It will join other Autodesk acquisitions like Pixlr, SketchBook in its consumer products group.

With a $60 million exit for Socialcam, it’s unclear if anyone will reap a big windfall in the Instagram of video sweepstakes. Video is still not as easy to shoot or view compared to pictures. That makes it harder to recreate the success of Instagram, which is built around simple sharing of photos.

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Verizon offers Color a second chance with video partnership

Ryan Kim — Mon, 07 May 2012 15:46:20 +0000

After Color’s much publicized flop last year, it would seem unlikely that anyone would look to the company as a big-time partner. But that’s just what Verizon Wireless plans to do. It will offer its customers the chance to use an enhanced version of Color, which will enable live video streaming with audio for the first time and double the existing frame rate.

The exclusive partnership is just the first step for Color, which will later this year embed its app even closer to the hardware of Verizon’s 4G phones, allowing users to broadcast in live 720p at first and potentially 1080p in about a year. Users will be able to pick out particular frames from the video that can be shared as photos. That, said Color’s CEO and co-founder Bill Nguyen, will enable users to experience live moments in high-quality video and will change the way people think about sharing through pictures and video.

“What you really want to get to is a point where the video camera can show what you’re seeing and act like a teleporter for people,” said Nguyen, who sold his previous start-up Lala to Apple.

30 seconds of live video

Color launched in March last year as a proximity-based photo-sharing network, but the service never caught on, in part because it was trying to create a new network for people to use. The company changed course in September, announcing that it was integrating its app into Facebook. That’s when it showed off the ability for users to share 30 seconds of live but silent video to their friends, who would get notified when a user was broadcasting live. Users can view live video on Facebook or their Color app or they can come back to the video and view it if they missed it live.

Technically, anyone with a 3G or 4G Verizon phone will be able to make use of the enhanced Color features. The app is available in the App Store or Google Play or users can call “COLOR” on their phones and get a text message link for downloading the app. Verizon is looking at pre-loading the app on select phones.

Showing off the network

Verizon’s strategy is to highlight examples of what faster 4G wireless networks can allow people to do, reminiscent of the work the carriers did to show off 3G networks years ago. And it’s also harkens back to the big push Verizon gave to the Droid lineup of phones, which became a big seller thanks to Verizon’s marketing muscle. There should be lot of similar marketing support for the Color integration as well.

Lewis said we can expect more partnerships in the future aimed at highlighting Verizon’s network. The company last year opened an app innovation center in San Francisco to encourage more app development.

Photos vs. video

Nguyen said he was inspired to reach out to Verizon because of the emergence of high-end video cameras like the RED digital camera, which can shoot in 4K and can produce high quality still shots as well. That helps solve the question of how to capture moments because one device can produce both video and stills, he said. Since photos are still preserved, it opens up the potential for live video to become more of a unit of sharing. Ultimately, he believes this type of live video will displace pictures as the way we preserve moments. This is what Nguyen wrote in a blog post about the news:

There’s something special about live. It’s spontaneous. You never know what to expect so you watch in anticipation. Live is also shared. A feeling of community, you’re experiencing something in real-time with other people. Family reunions, concerts, or ball games, we come together for live moments.

Questions ahead

There are still a lot of questions to be answered. It’s unclear which phones will get the deeper integration of Color, though it will likely be quad-core Android devices. It’s also not how Facebook will feel about the upgrades to Color, which will mean a lot more storage of videos and pictures. Also, we still have to see how well Nguyen and his team of 50 engineers can pull this all off. Lewis said some of the more ambitious plans are somewhat experimental so there’s no guarantee that it will happen exactly like Nguyen is describing.

But it’s still an intriguing future that Nguyen is proposing. I’m personally interested in sharing more live video but I’m not sure I’m ready to have that replace photo sharing. With photo sharing, I get to self-edit and choose what images go out. Live video sharing means you don’t know what people will see at the end of those 30 seconds. It could be completely boring or very embarrassing. Of course, you can choose to delete after broadcasting. But the idea that we can move to a model where the distinctions between video and photos get blurred has a certain logic to it. Why capture just one or the other when we can capture both?

If this works, this could be a big turnaround for Color, which still hasn’t shed its rap as an overhyped bubble startup with its $41 million in funding. Though Color still has a lot to prove, its second act is proving more promising thanks to a big assist from Verizon.

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Rumblefish’s Friendly Music relaunches with 750k songs

Ryan Lawler — Fri, 16 Mar 2012 17:22:07 +0000

Nearly two years ago, music licensing company Rumblefish came out with a brilliant idea: create a website called Friendly Music that would allow YouTube users to easily add soundtracks to their videos through a catalog of fully licensed songs. For just $1.99 a song, anyone could add a soundtrack to their music videos without worrying about being flagged for copyright infringement on the video-sharing site.

Friendly Music was launched with a library of 35,000 pre-cleared soundtracks for YouTube users. Since then, the company has been working to add even more music to choose from. Now the catalog includes more than 750,000 songs altogether. But that means finding the right track is more difficult than ever — which is why Friendly Music has implemented a few new features to enhance soundtrack discovery.

One tool Friendly Music has added is a MoodMap, which lets users search for a soundtrack based on the feeling of the video they’ve created. By clicking within a rainbow-like circle, they can find songs that match a certain mood, which refines things a bit. There’s also a “What’s the Occasion” tab for finding soundtracks relevant to certain holidays and occasions. And finally, Friendly Music has an editorially curated Editor’s Picks, with songs focusing specifically on current events, pop culture or upcoming holidays.

It’s also important for users to be able to test tracks out before they license a song and apply it to their video. As a result, Friendly Music has a new feature that lets users preview any YouTube video with a music track before purchase. They can use the tool to adjust the timing of the video and audio track, or move throughout the video’s timeline with the soundtrack loaded.

If they don’t necessarily want to license the song outright, they can create a “Mash” — which is basically just a combination of any YouTube video and a Friendly Music soundtrack. All Mashes have unique URLs, and users can share or comment on those videos with friends. Other viewers can then remix, or “Remash,” the video with other soundtracks.

For Rumblefish, the hope is that adding more songs and more features will get more YouTube video creators involved, and hopefully boost sales of its soundtracks. It’s pretty vast library should help with that, and the ability to share uncompleted videos through the Mash feature could build awareness of the site and its capabilities.

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NewNet Q4: Platform mania and social commerce shakeout

Thu, 19 Jan 2012 20:39:31 +0000

The fourth quarter may have lacked a dominating big-event product announcement like Q3’s Facebook platform extension or Q2’s unveiling of Google+, but the NewNet world continued to buzz along. In the battle for mind share, everyone wanted to be a platform. Meanwhile, consumer and social technologies continued to gain momentum, and new vehicles for content and service discovery presented both challenges and opportunities for NewNet companies. And it is hard to ignore the overcrowded but growing world of daily deals. This quarterly report analyzes these trends and others, and it also provides a near-term outlook of trends, technologies and companies to watch in 2012. Companies mentioned in the report include Amazon, Facebook and Socialcast. For a full list of companies, and to read the full report, sign up for a free trial.

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Twitvid raises $6.5M to boost video on Twitter

Janko Roettgers — Thu, 29 Sep 2011 14:17:06 +0000

Twitvid has raised $6.5 million in funding in a Series B that was led by Azure Capital Partners, with existing investor Draper Fisher Jurvetson also chipping in. The company said in a press release that it wants to use the new cash infusion to hire additional people and build out its infrastructure.

Twitvid started out as one of countless Twitter video sharing sites, but it has manage to stick around even as a number of its competitors (12seconds, Twitvid.io, Twiddeo) had to shut down. Part of that may have to do with partnerships with popular Twitter clients like TweetDeck; part of it may be because the service embraced mobile platforms early on, publishing its own apps for iOS, Android and BlackBerry.

However, it’s getting awfully crowded again in the social video sharing space these days, with companies like the Justin.tv spin-off and social video network Socialcam and new startups like Tout trying awfully familiar-sounding ideas.

The biggest test for Twitvid may be how it can adapt to Twitter’s own increasingly aggressive media plans. The relaunched Twitter website incorporates more video, and Twitter also teamed up with Photobucket in June to power its own image hosting. One has to wonder when Twitter will extend this kind of partnership to video clips as well, and what this would do to startups like Twitvid.

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Klip is ready to take on Socialcam for mobile video sharing

Ryan Lawler — Tue, 20 Sep 2011 11:30:56 +0000

It seems every month or so another mobile video sharing service pops up, promising to make it easier for users to share experiences they’ve shot on their phones with friends. The latest, called Klip, aims to separate itself from the rest of the crowd with high-speed adaptive bit-rate technology that will allow users to scroll through videos and a new tagging system that lets them set categories to keep track of when new videos are uploaded.

With an ever-growing number of consumers walking around with video cameras on their mobile phones, Klip hopes to become the go-to app for shooting, uploading and sharing videos with friends. With a simple interface for connecting to networks like Facebook, Twitter and YouTube, Klip makes it easy to reach friends and family where they already are.

Of course, Klip is far from alone in the social/mobile video sharing game. There are any number of startups seeking to own the nascent market and become the Instagram of video. Among others, there’s Socialcam (recently spun out from Justin.tv), BlipSnips, Tout, Vibop, Viddy, Vlix and Vloggo.

Klip’s big differentiator is an ultrafast adaptive-streaming technology that enables users to quickly scroll through elements of a video without having to play the whole thing. It also has a dynamic hashtag system, which lets users create and track different categories attached to videos that are uploaded. And, like most competitors, it also lets users tag their friends in videos, make comments and favorite videos that were uploaded by friends and contacts.

For an idea of how it works, check out this promotional video from Klip:

One other advantage Klip has is its founder: The company was created in April 2011 by serial entrepreneur Alain Rossman, the former chairman of Vudu (before the company was sold to Wal-Mart) and OpenWave, among others. Altogether, Rossman has founded five startups, three of which went public and two of which were acquired. This latest venture has raised $2 million in funding from Rossman and Matrix Partners.

That said, it’s a very crowded market. Klip has very cool technology, but it will also need consumer adoption to make it worthwhile for most users. With a number of competitors already vying for consumers’ attention when it comes to sharing their videos on social networks, Klip has a tough road ahead.

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Tout goes beyond the iPhone with webcam video sharing

Ryan Lawler — Fri, 19 Aug 2011 20:38:13 +0000

Social video service Tout is taking a big step to broadening usage, with new capabilities that will allow users to share moments with friends even if they don’t have its iPhone app. It has also improved communications between users, with the ability to “re-tout” and reply to videos others have uploaded.

Tout is a service that lets users record short 15-second moments and share them with friends. Originally, the service launched with an iPhone app, as well as the ability to share short video clips from YouTube. The latest update, which just launched in the last few days, enables Tout users to record or upload videos straight from the web browser.

That will broaden potential usage of Tout, which so far has been tied to its iOS app. While an Android app is in the works, it will be a few more weeks before it becomes available to users. And, of course, offering a webcam or video upload capability also taps into the vast population of users who *gasp* don’t have a smartphone with a camera at all. It will also potentially put Tout up against browser-based sharing services like Vyou.

In addition to new ways to share moments with followers on the service, it also now allows users to “re-tout” and reply to one another’s videos. Users whose videos are replied to will then get mobile and email notifications telling them someone has posted a response.

According to CEO Michael Downing, the reply function came out of user behavior that was already happening on the service, as users attempted to engage with each other, even if the tools weren’t quite there yet to support it. Just as Twitter didn’t have retweet (RT) or @ replies built into its original code base, but added them to its products later, Tout is drawing on suggestions from the community to help drive its product road map.

Continuously adding features is one way that Tout hopes to compete in an increasingly crowded market for sharing short video messages with friends. In the past year, we’ve seen new entrants like Justin.tv’s Socialcam, Spotmixer’s Vlix, Vloggo and Viddy all launch, each seeking to become the “Instagram of video.”

Tout is also trying to drive interest by signing up celebrities to the service. The biggest celeb to sign up so far is probably Shaquille O’Neal (no pun intended), who not only announced his retirement from basketball using Tout, but also joined the startup’s board. Shaq’s presence has been huge, as the former NBA star drove more than a million views in just 24 hours after his retirement announcement.

Photo courtesy of Flickr user David Burillo.

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Storytree wants to bring your family memories online

Ryan Lawler — Tue, 16 Aug 2011 21:08:02 +0000

With the growing number of social networks out there, users have plenty of ways to share the minutiae of their daily lives. But few are positioned to help them collect and share rich family memories. That could change with the launch of Storytree, which aims to provide a platform for users to share stories with their family and friends.

Storytree, which is launching at the 500 Startups demo day Tuesday, was borne out of founder Matt Sullivan’s time at the Stanford d.school. The project emerged out of his Master’s thesis, which was centered on finding ways for the elderly to share their wealth of rich family stories. In a phone interview, Sullivan said he spent a lot of time at retirement homes, and found there were few tools available that made it easy for them to do so.

Originally the team, which is made up of Sullivan and co-founder Zach Weiner, were thinking about a system that would have family members mailing cheap video cameras to each other and to “hubs” where the videos would be uploaded, put together and made into DVDs that could be shared. But the web and mobile apps offered a cheaper and quicker way for family members to communicate.

With Storytree, users can create private pages, then tell their own stories through pictures, audio and video, which they can then share with friends or family. Or they can ask other members to contribute their own stories by emailing them. The whole system works entirely in the web browser, letting a user record a video memory with a webcam or record audio from his or her computer’s built-in mic. Soon, Storytree will also have an iPhone app, allowing users to record and add to their stories from the mobile phone. The hope is to get users to share stories based on “trigger events,” like a wedding or birth of a child, to share stories.

While the company is still in beta, it’s exploring different revenue models. Sullivan said he was considering a freemium model whereby subscription users would get additional features, like the ability to export to DVD. The company is also looking to make its platform available for larger organizations to aggregate video memories of regular users.

Storytree has received some funding as part of the 500 Startups accelerator program, as well as the program’s Design Fund. The startup has two full-time employees — Sullivan and Weiner — but is looking to raise more money and expand its team.

Storytree: Remember the Time from StoryTree on Vimeo.

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