We all know that Instagram sold to Facebook for a boatload of money, and now all eyes are on two social video apps that are growing fast. Viddy and Socialcam both feature top-notch investors, high-flying valuations and a surge of new users. Viddy, for example, is reportedly valued at $300 million off its last investment round, and it saw 5.5 million downloads over an 11-day period. Socialcam says its app was downloaded 4 million times in just two days. And today there’s news that Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg created an account on Viddy, uploading a video of his dog.
Ok, it’s a little crazy in Silicon Valley these days. Neither of these apps have near the community of Instagram, but that won’t stop the tech blogs swirling over Zuck’s appearance on Viddy. And let’s not forget that Instagram is planning its own video product. Regardless, just as Instagram has changed the photo-sharing world, one or more of these startups has the potential to up-end the mobile video space. And you can be certain that Google/YouTube is watching.
Both Viddy and Socialcam (from the Justin.tv folks) have Instagram-like filters for adding special production effects to clip. Both enable you to share clips easily with your friends. And both let you follow people to see their video moments. Socialcam has been around a little longer and has a more populist feel, focusing on the simplicity of recording and sharing video. It’s also home to several brands, like TMZ (below), which already sports over 222,000 followers. Viddy also emphasizes simplicity but seems to cater to more amateur-professional types “to capture, produce, and share beautiful videos with the world.”
So what could this mean for TV? You can’t help but look at Instagram’s impact on the photo industry, quickly becoming the top photo-sharing app (outside of Facebook) with more than 40M users. What began as an artsy alternative turned into a thriving community that, among other things, has suddenly become a big source of citizen journalism photos. (When the Space Shuttle flew over DC and NY, for example, there were hundreds of photos posted in minutes.)
Imagine the same for video, but there’s a big difference here. YouTube has substantially more reach than Flickr, the legacy photo experience that Instagram surpassed. YouTube’s sharing functionality is built into iPhones and Android devices, attracting a constant deluge of citizen journalism captured on video. And it’s already a platform that fosters new talent. At the same time, YouTube seems more focused on attracting higher-quality content that advertisers will want as opposed to fostering a personal video sharing experience between friends.
So there appears to be an opportunity here, although it’s unclear if Viddy or Socialcam can ever achieve Instagram-like scale among active users, given YouTube’s ubiquity. But as we can already see with TMZ on Socialcam, there’s a marketing distribution opportunity, especially among the younger demos. As we always say, the key is to experiment with promising technologies early, and stay tuned…
