Silicon Valley popular video sharing app inventory who's next Instagram

The Wall Street Journal recently published an article that focuses on the current hot areas of video-sharing applications. Instagram such as Jade in the former, many of these start-ups have won the favor of many well-known investors, they are competing in the field of video sharing, competing for the next Instagram.

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With Facebook spending 1 billion of dollars on acquisitions of photo-sharing apps, the focus has shifted to the latest phenomenon of mobile apps: uploading personal videos from smartphones, Instagram

Now, a growing number of start-ups are offering easy ways to share video from smartphones, allowing people to add music and text and share the final video with Facebook or other social networks.

Like Instagram, these services quickly attracted millions of of users, while also merging huge sums of money, including some of the top venture capital firms, movie stars, and the wife of Steve Jobs, Apple's late CEO, Laurene (Laurene Powell Jobs) and other angel investors.

Income-generating issues

However, because these mobile video sharing applications have not yet achieved revenue and no specific business model, people's enthusiasm for their investment may be cooling. Startups like Viddy have started charging for extra functionality, such as the ability to add filtering and special effects to video, but the effort is still in its infancy.

"The biggest problem with mobile apps is monetization. "Mobile is not the ideal place to advertise," Tino Dessespede Dino Decespedes, Mobli Media vice president of mobile video applications. "Maguire registered users have exceeded 3 million since their investments in Leonardo DiCaprio (Leonardo DiCaprio) and Tobey (Tobey Mobli) last September.

Mobli is also trying to charge some of the features in the application, such as adding a Disney theme to the video frame. But the company is still in the process of exploring business models. Of course, if Mobli can find a way to get rich quickly like the Instagram that Facebook bought last month, it's not a problem for it. Instagram had no revenue before, but it launched just 18 months and the user volume reached 35 million.

However, such deals are rare in Silicon Valley. Given that people are more likely to share pictures than video, some investors question whether the popularity of video services can reach the level of picture sharing.

So far, the rise of video-sharing applications has been driven mainly by the rapid user growth of start-ups such as Viddy. The Los Angeles company's application was launched a year ago, with a cumulative download of about 26 million and a daily increase of about 1 million users.

Viddy recently negotiated a new round of financing that is valued at more than $200 million trillion, according to people familiar with the matter. A Viddy spokeswoman declined to comment.

Last week, the app was hotly contested with the Socialcam of the App Store's free apps list, which was split from video site Justin.tv last year. The Socialcam, which was launched about 14 months ago, is currently in the lead, with a user capacity of 36 million.

Michael Seibel, CEO of Socialcam, says his company has been considering various business models, including selling features to brands, such as pushing video to its mobile phone at a particular location where users enter such Times Square. or send a movie trailer to a student at lunch time. But Seibel points out, "We have less than 1% of our energy in business models." ”

Sticky or less than picture sharing

Some entrepreneurs and investors who support these applications say that the nature of the video bandwidth, the high cost of wireless data and the different mobile video habits suggest that their stickiness and growth may not be as viral as Instagram.

For example, compared to pictures, video production time is longer and viewing time is also. It is unclear whether video-sharing apps can be a threat to a large company in the near term, just as Instagram forced Facebook to offer a huge takeover bid.

"Video doesn't have the ease and convenience of a picture. "It is a bigger and trickier technical issue," said Bruce Dunlevie, general partner Brousse Dengleve Benchmark Capital, a venture capitalist who has funded Instagram. ”

But benchmark capital has also invested in mobile video companies, which last November took a round of $8 million trillion of Klip INC's funding. Dengleve said he thought the market would be valuable because the video was more than enough to bring more lasting memories to people.

Mobile operators are also looking at video-sharing, which seeks to promote services that encourage users to sign up for a more expensive fourth-generation wireless network's data package. Verizon Wireless announced May 7 that it has signed an agreement with Color Labs Inc. to preinstall the latter's real-time video-sharing applications in part of Verizon handsets running its fourth-generation wireless network. The collaboration will allow color to connect its applications to mobile phones, providing users with better quality real-time video.

But color has struggled, with just over 1 million users. Last year color was a picture app that once financed 41 million dollars. The company announced a business transformation last December, focusing instead on real-time video-sharing apps, allowing users to play short live video on smartphones and share it with Facebook. Bill Nguyen, the founder and CEO of Color, said the Bill Nouyerne agreement with Verizon would have the "Technology leap" application.

Online video is on the rise again

Companies are creating video-sharing apps at a time when Silicon Valley is once again showing interest in online video. When Google spent $1.65 billion on YouTube in 2006, venture capitalists began to drool on online video companies. But many investors have suffered setbacks because of the inability to cope with the challenges posed by the lack of content, the management of content, copyright issues and the support of wireless networks for video, and the rapid collapse of YouTube companies.

Earlier this year, Viddy was briefly released from Apple's App store after a user posted pornographic content. A spokesman for the Viddy said the event lasted 48 hours and that the company's system with investors was "one of the most active and effective content auditing systems in the App Store".

However, benefiting from improved camera technology and network and the spread of social media, video-sharing has attracted a new round of investment, and a new group of entrepreneurs. According to people familiar with the matter, Napster co-founder Sien Park (Sean Parker) and Fanning (Shawn Fanning) will launch a social video chat Service airtime in the coming weeks. One person familiar with the matter said the site would also provide a mobile experience. Napster melted 8 million dollars last fall.

In addition, entrepreneurs point out that YouTube can do more to move. "YouTube's experience on the iphone is too bad. Mobli's Dessespede said, "The pace of change is too slow." "Users cannot upload videos directly via YouTube, but they can upload them using the iphone's video camera."

"Developers are bringing more video apps to the Web, which is a good thing for consumers," a YouTube spokeswoman said. He added that the company was working with a number of application developers to enable users to upload video to YouTube. Apple has yet to respond as a YouTube iphone app developer. (Lebang)