Instant Videos and Sharing: How Tough is the Market?

Back a few years ago we couldn’t imagine how simple it is to capture a video in seconds, upload it to some cloud storage and share it with anyone you want. It all, actually, started with yFrog, mostly popular among Twitter users, if my memory doesn’t fool me.

For now, the situation on the market has radically changed and the competition is still getting more and more intense, much due to the collosal popularity of instant videos among users, who are lucky enough to earn a smartphone. The diversity of already-presented apps in the niche is quite impressive, though many of them are oriented on iPhone users, rather than people with Android smartphones and tablets. Let’s check just a few:

Gnzo: the application is rather new, as it has only recently been presented to the general public.
Its core features comprise users’ ability to capture short (up 6 second-long) videos on a mobile device, share them instantly with others and a possibility to arrange others’ videos according to a selected tag, user’s names, etc. using an available multi-viewer. What is a bit disappointing is the fact that all videos are open for public view, so you can’t set up just the limited access to them.

Viddy: the application was initially introduced a few years ago and is recognized to enable catching short-videos for further uploading to the database and sharing on Twitter or FB. Other app features also include the possibility to follow some particular users, check the trendy videos, and make the customized filtered videos. At the same time, there’re also predefined limitations in size of uploaded videos in Twitter-resembling Viddy – each video can be only up to 15 seconds long.

4Photo for iPhone/iPad: the application is rather well-known among users in different parts of the world. Its beneficial features, compared to the rivals, comprise the possibility to capture both quick photos and quick videos with the application and the absence of limitations, regarding the size of videos. Due to the app being related to the cloud storage 4shared, the users have got a chance to use the entire free 10GB of space for their videos and photos, access any of them on the go at the web-account as well and share any taken video or picture instantly via Twitter. At the same time, it’s simple to further share the links to captured masterpieces to anyone, with either open or limited access to them. Some of the videos (or photos) can still be left closed for public view, if you wish to.

Any of the offered applications, obviously, possesses a number of somewhat specific features. On the other hand, I’d go with the one, where you control the access to your data, in the first place.


Stay cool)
Andy

Fancy the new “Fancy” Pinterest Rival?

I remember my first post about Pinterest, written a while ago, when the service hadn’t yet become the new passion for millions and how delightful it was to receive a confirmation of my personal account.

In case you didn’t know, Pinterest is a social service, which enables you to repost interesting, funny pics from the large accessible gallery of the site and add the fun photos yourself from any site you would like (all links are kept, so there’s no copyright infringement). Actually it works in the similar way you would add some useful files to your account at 4shared.com, selected among the data, previously uploaded by other 4shared users.

With some time having passed, I am now happy to present you with my, so to say, alpha-test of the fresh Pinterest Rival – Fancy, which is, actually, quite similar to its Pin-forerunner, yet has also got a number of its own essential peculiarities.

More reserved in the colorscheme of its interface, Fancy is seemingly more focused on attracting carrier-oriented people, who check the essential and necessary sites more frequently, than some cute animals, or something.

Some other design peculiarities go to the “Fancy It” button, which displays a popsickle icon. In this respect, I’d say it doesn’t look likewise stylish as the “Pin It” button, and I didn’t really get the idea with ice-cream (perhaps due to the fact that I loathe eating it lol).

As for available options, the service allows you to check the latest users’ Fancies, Fancy some of them and add personally found masterpieces. Unlike Pinterest enabling to add its Pin button to the browser, Fancy is offering to install the special Fancy Add-On (at least what I was shown in Chrome) to be able to Fancy interesting stuff on the Web and add it to your personal account at the site.

Moreover, there’s also a unique feature in Fancy, which hasn’t even been fully implemented by Pinterest – that is an ability to purchase some of the things you happen to browse in the gallery. In a simple example, it might be a leather jacket, the photo of which has been posted by one of the stores, or virtually anything else, as long as you see a “Buy it” button near the picture.

As for the general impressions about Fancy, I can’t but admit that the service has got all chances to compete with Pinterest in future. Here, the initial photo-reposting trend being one of the hottest ones now, I guess we might witness the rise of one more competitor in the niche soon enough as well.

Stay cool)
Andy

SendHub Messaging – Remedy or Contagion?

How often do you SMS your friends now? Perhaps, much less, than at least a few years ago, when social media and various messengers weren’t as popular as they are now. In fact, some of us have almost stopped using the SMS phone feature, having changed it to texting in other ways, or just making calls.

Nonetheless, despite the fact that many experts predict the future death of SMS’s, they are still available for usage with individual and business purposes. The latter case can, actually, be rather profitable for the company; otherwise I wouldn’t really notice the reasons, why the new service – SendHub, a relatively new startup, has already got so many clients.

The essence of SendHub is awfully simple: as long as you provide everyone in your potential contact base with your phone number (previously selected among versatile SendHub options) and any chosen keyword, each user sending the keyword to this very number will automatically be added to your contact list. In such a way, you’ll be able to send multiple SMS’s to everyone from the list and inform your clients about the news, updates or discounts in a faster way.

At first sight, the idea of SendHub is seemingly very convenient for an enterprise, as there’s no need to either collect the contact data or share the information manually. The automechanism will do it for you.

At the same time, there’s something quite illogical about SendHub, without any doubt. To start with, many of us (ok, many like me))) get irritated, when notice one more spam-SMS from the service, you’ve once shared your number with, like the restaurant or the taxi-center, for instance. You’d definitely sign out from it, but, unfortunately, there’s no “Unsubscribe” link, as in e-mail newsletters. SendHub, at the same time, presupposes your voluntary decision to sign up for being spammed even more, is it even logical? For users, like me, it’s far from any common sense, in fact.

In this respect, it seems almost impossible, how SendHub clients get their customers contacts and, thus, manage to use the service after all.

In a whole, though I always tend to wish luck to any new startup, which has got something creative in it, I somehow miss a more usual way to spread news among the users. E-mail notifications or just the separate news sections at your account, like they do it at 4shared, for example, are a much better way out. The latter seems even more awesome, as you check the messages/news box only, if you need to find out about something new, otherwise, the notifications won’t disturb you.

Stay cool and Happy V-Day to all who care about the holiday)

Andy

Ridejoy – Expansion of LifeStyle Sharing Opportunities

Within the current realities, the most essential trend we’re witnessing is, undoubtedly, the global integration and communication. In fact, it often seems that the world has eliminated its borders, at least in terms of information, spread and shared among various countries, cities and states.

Essentially speaking, we have already become more than accustomed to socializing via Skype, sharing our thoughts via Twitter, our photos - via Flickr, Tumblr or Instagram (I wonder why I’ve never written about it), our data – via 4shared, or any other file-storage service.

For now, apparently, we’ve got one more unique tool to socialize, and not only on the Web, but on the road trip (consequently, of course) as well. I’m talking about the newly-presented service - RideJoy, specifically designed to help people find the passangers or the drivers to organize the common roadtrip. As the authors claim, you won’t need to ask all of your friends (and prehaps, your friends’ friends) on FB, whether they’d share a journey with you, and you won’t need to travel alone any longer.

Well, to say, I was taken aback a bit at first, when I encountered RideJoy for the first time – it was, actually, rather hard to believe, that there had been thousands of similarly cheap and easy-to-use services before. That’s so, as the specific niche on the market it’s aimed to occupy is potentially very-very profitable, that is a great number of people would love to share a roadtrip with others. Well, there you go, we’ve now got RideJoy.

To start with, what I liked about the service is its incredible simplicity. You only need to enter the site of departure, place of destination and a desirable date to get the matching results. Moreover, it’s also simple and fast to log in via your FB or Twitter account and avoid the boring registration procedure. Excellent? Well, almost.

The thing is that as the service is rather young, it now only covers the West Coast of the USA, so if you live somewhere in the UK, or elsewhere, you won’t be able to use it. In addition to that, it won’t be suitable for conservative or cautious people, who still remember having been taught not to talk to strangers and aren’t interested in company of barely-known drivers or passangers.

At the same time, it might be considered a funny adventure option for those, who crave for something new and unusual in their lives. The only essential aspect they should keep in mind is the money, as with RideJoy most users prefer getting the payment, at least when they drive.

Stay cool)
Andy