Social Video Boom

Move over YouTube, you’ve got company. In the past few months, social video apps Viddy, SocialCam, Klip, Cinemagram, Tout and Mobli are all contributing to the evolution of social video.  These new social video apps are changing the way people create and share videos through mobile devices. Each app has its own nuance, but they all make it easy for people to take, edit and share photos with the mobile community and distribute them on Facebook and Twitter.

As consumers migrate to smartphones, there has been an ongoing shift in how people create and consume media.   Social video apps are starting to take over and quickly. A recent study conducted by Flurry analytics indicates there may be a major cultural shift around the corner, especially how people consume mobile and online video. Since July 2011, video and photo apps grew from users spending 87 minutes per to 231minutes per month, making this segment the fastest growing in 2012.

By now, most marketers are aware of how Instagram, thanks to Facebook’s 1 billion dollar purchase, and how the app changed the way people take and share photos. What Instagram did for photos, Viddy, Klip and Socialcam (recently bought by Autodesk) are doing for video. They are the fastest movers on the app markets (iOS and/or Android). Each of these apps includes video editing filters that allow users to modify the look and feel of a video. Viddy’s appeal is the ability to edit videos and add music tracks to the video.

However, don’t count Tout out, which was the app of choice for Shaq to announce his retirement.  Tout, reminiscent of Seesmic when it first started, makes it an excellent video alternative to Twitter.

Cinemagram has a completely different take by allowing users to select 2-3 seconds of video and edit by animating certain parts of the video. It’s a hybrid app that uses video to create an animated image.

Time will tell whether there is a long-term shift in behavior and whether people migrating away from YouTube. With consumers migrating more towards Android and iPhone devices, 54.9 percent of U.S. mobile subscribers now own a smartphone, marketers should keep their eye on these new social video apps.