Chad Hurley and Steve Chen are no strangers to video applications. The two men are the cofounders of the largest online video website to date: YouTube. Hurley and Chen sold YouTube to Google in 2006 and went on to start a new company called AVOS, an acronym for audio visual operating system. Now they’re trying to change the video world again with a new app called Mixbit. As stated on their website:
“The MixBit app and website helps people create videos together. The app lets you record, edit and publish videos as short as one second or as long as an hour—right from your mobile device. The MixBit site is also the first site that lets users collaborate with each other and remix videos uploaded by the community.”
The focus of Mixbit is to tackle the daunting task of solving the problems around video creation. Although people are able to record short video clips with Vine and Instagram, those productions tend to be of a very crude and amateur nature. Instagram did take a small step towards correcting that, by allowing uploads. As Chad Hurley says in his blogpost:
“Today we want to remove the barriers to video creation. That means giving people intuitive and flexible recording and remixing tools so it’s easier than ever to tell meaningful stories through video. It means inventing new ways to encourage and enable people to collaborate with each other. And it also means exploring new approaches to identity, such as letting people upload videos without forcing them to sign up.”
Mixbit is definitely taking a step in the right direction. Unlike still photos, shooting video is not as forgiving, so editing tools and intuitive ways to record are needed to help people create better video. Whether or not it will be a competitor to Vine and Instgram remains to be seen. Although Mixbit users are able to create videos lasting up to an hour long, I’m not sure if that fits today’s Twitter generation’s short attention span. Although Instagram and Vine videos are crude, the short burst form fits more along the lines of the way today’s Internet is being utilized. Mixbit may end up being more of a creation tool for YouTube than a social video service like Vine.
Check out the company’s featured video below and give us your thoughts. Are you ready for another video app?
