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Tag: socialcam

  • Socialcam Is The Latest App Success Story

    Socialcam Is The Latest App Success Story

    There is no better time than the present to build an app. If it can get popular, some larger company is going to buy it for a lot more than you ever invested in it. Instagram may be the biggest success story of them all, but popular mobile app Socialcam is no slouch.

    Autodesk, creators of fine visual effects and game development software, just announced their acquisition of Socialcam for $60 million. If you aren’t familiar with Socialcam, it’s a simple video recording and editing software that allows people to easily share their creations with friends. A review on the app store from TechCrunch that says it’s “Instagram for video” is not far from the truth.

    So what does Autodesk, a company that develops sophisticated software for movies and games, want to do with a simple social app like Socialcam? It’s all about branching out with Autodesk wanting to offer their services to everyday people alongside the industry professionals. In a post on the Socialcam blog, the team describes it best:

    If you haven’t heard of Autodesk, that’s probably because the company is best known for its professional tools for design and visualization. But their mission is to help everybody imagine, design and create a better world. Autodesk has a proven track record of acquiring and scaling fast-growing, early stage consumer businesses while staying true to their core audience and vision. Recently, with products like SketchBook and Pixlr, they’re making their award winning technology accessible to millions of people around the world through intuitive web, mobile and social platforms. We fit in right there–helping people around the world capture, create, view and share video in real time, wherever they are. We hope you’re as excited as we are about the good things in store for Socialcam as a result of this news!

    The team promises that Socialcam won’t change one bit and they’ll only be improving from here on out. Considering that Autodesk has some impressive video editing software of their own, it wouldn’t be too far of a stretch to think it would find its way into Socialcam at some point in the future. The concept of being able to produce a professional film on your phone is a pretty exciting concept.

    So now that Instagram and Socialcam have been bought up, what else is next? I’m personally waiting until somebody creates the “Instagram of music” that gets bought up by a company like Spotify. You can’t apply a sepia tone to a deep bass track, but that doesn’t preclude developers from trying.

    If you want to try out Socialcam and find out for yourself why it’s worth $60 million, check out the app on both iOS and Android.

  • Socialcam Controversy Leads To A “Fix”

    Socialcam Controversy Leads To A “Fix”

    Socialcam is one of the most popular video apps on the iPhone, and it’s become entangled in a bit of controversy. There’s a social feature that’s on by default, and shares the videos you watch to your Facebook feed, but apparently, even if you turn it off, the feature comes back when you restart it.

    Well, at least it was doing this, until it “pushed a fix”.

    Circa co-founder Matt Galligan blogged about the issue and posted a video about it. He calls it “Socialcam’s shady secret”:

    In an update to his blog post, Galligan shared a statement from Socialcam, saying, “Matt – please recheck this – we have pushed a fix to correct this problem. If you turn off Social Mode in the app it should remain off the next time you open the app.

    Galligan says he won’t bother to install it again to find out if that’s the case.

    As reported last month, the app had a reported 4 million new users over the course of a weekend.

  • Viddy Growing by 1 Million Users a Day

    Last week we reported that Viddy is currently undergoing a round of fundraising that puts valuation of $370 million on the company. A report today from the Wall Street Journal via Mashable puts a value of the company a $200 million. Either way, the company is still undergoing fundraising efforts after hitting 26 million users.

    Launched just a year ago, Viddy has benefitted from celebrity endorsements, including a video posted by Mark Zuckerberg of his dog Beast, and its integration into Facebook. The company’s celebrity backers include Will Smith, Shakira and Jay-Z, all following the example of Zuckerberg.

    Sold as an “Instagram for video”, the service has seen competition from the likes of Socialcam, who now sits at around 36 million users. With a growth rate of about 1 Million a day, Viddy may soon catch up.

    Both Viddy and Socialcam lead the way for the virally trending video sharing apps on the market today. Some investors are waiting to see how this plays out, however, as video takes up a lot of bandwidth when compared to images. Once subscribers see the change on their wireless data costs, they may not be so keen on using the app anymore.

    As the Wall Street Journal reports, monetization also seems to be a big problem right now. Viddy now charges for extra tools like filters and effects, but haven’t seen a lot of revenue from these add-ons. Then there is the problem of advertising on mobile phones. Customers are often impatient with intrusive ads on such a small screen, especially when it comes advertising on user generated content.

    Then again, Viddy may not be looking for big advertising dollars right now. If they grow large enough and fast enough, they may draw the attention of major players in the industry. Instagram saw this kind of success when they were bought by Facebook earlier this year.

  • Viddy Seeks to Raise $30 Million

    Viddy Seeks to Raise $30 Million

    Viddy, a sort of Instagram for video, has just revealed that it’s going for $30 million in venture capitol during its series B funding, with a valuation of $370 million – while likely banking on its 10 million users. This comes directly after similar video-sharing platform and likely soon-to-be direct competitor Socialcam reportedly added 4 million new subscribers over last weekend. With Instagram recently being acquired by Facebook in a quick $1 billion transaction, developers are scrambling to optimize a sort of video version of the cash cow, as mobile networks advance to better host tricky moving-picture content.

    Viddy was able to raise a $6 million Series A in February, and is likely banking on some of the Instagram intrigue, or better, the investor ethos possibly generated by countless mentions of one billion dollars that have been flying around the industry as of late. It was recently reported that Viddy was the top app for iPhone for a time, beating out Instagram itself and OMGPOP’s ‘Draw Something.’

    Here is a video review of the Viddy platform:

    Viddy was launched last April, and allows users to shoot 15-second videos on their devices, edit the clips and then share them.

  • Socialcam Grabs 4 Million New Users

    Socialcam Grabs 4 Million New Users

    Socialcam, a social video app for iPhone and Android that has been spreading like wildfire, has added a new feature, in attempts to keep hold of it’s 4 million new users garnered over the past weekend. Justin Kan, the co-founder of Justin.tv helped to develop Socialcam, which is a sort of Instagram for video, and investors are presently all over it. And the creators are scrambling to keep up:

    hacker news

    Still, Socialcam’s 3-man team has been able to crank out updates, including one from yesterday adding the ability to instantly play videos that are in a users main feed when selected, instead of loading a new page to watch. This functionality streamlines the interface, making it more intuitive. Socialcam CEO Michael Siebel had recently stated, “We’re not just looking for distribution. We want the app to be better for everyone, to make sure that we take all the pain out of both making and watching videos – My goal is to make the process of taking and watching videos as easy as it is for photos.”

    With Instagram going to Facebook for $1 billion, a sort of video version of the app is in high demand. While Viddy has been gaining a lot of users as of late, Socialcam’s apparent bump of 4 million within a couple of days blows the former out of the water. It will be interesting to see how video content advances in line with expanding 4G LTE network capabilities.

    Hat tip to TechCrunch.