Photos made up the initial years of social networking and now the trend has shifted towards sharing videos. In 2005, YouTube made online videos popular but 10 minutes was too much for an average person to create anything interesting without investing in good quality camera and learning video editing. And then came the iPhone in 2007. The simplicity of usage it brought amidst the Blackberrys and the Nokias and more importantly, the app revolution it started, created a vast new market full of possibilities.
Better bandwidth, capable cameraphones and internet connected apps are now the norm and people are taking a lot of videos that aren’t getting shared as much as photos. Moving images and sound is always more potent in telling a story than just pictures but the trick lies in simplifying the video taking and sharing process so that anyone will pick up their phone and create video content with as much ease as snapping a selfie. BeBirbal aims to do that and more.
“Ice Bucket Challenge was perfect for BeBirbal. The way in which the app could have hosted the videos in one thread, making it easy for people to follow everyone’s addition in one place”, says Olly Whittle, the founder of BeBirbal. Ice Bucket Challenge was the biggest viral sensation of 2014, seeing involvement from common everybody to celebrities like Oprah and Mark Zuckerberg, for a good cause. The videos were scattered all over YouTube and other social networks and highlighted the need for a service like BeBirbal which could simplify the content generation and engagement in such viral events.
Olly spent his teenage years in India and graduated from University of London having studied English Literature and History. He is a veteran entrepreneur and have started businesses in finance, ecommerce, mobile apps and online marketing. One of his ventures, SWARM marketing has been running for 5 years now and have published over 25 apps.
How BeBirbal Compares to Others
Vine gave a new twist to video sharing with 6 seconds limit on the uploads and looped playback which makes for an addictive blend (much like GIFs). But if YouTube is too long for mass adoption then Vine is probably too short. Both require a considerable effort in getting the narrative right and stops short of being frequently used by the public at large – an important factor in the profitability of a platform. Instagram got the lenght just right, at 15 seconds, but is geared more towards social networking than content creation, evident from its lack of editing features.
BeBirbal offers some great yet simple editing features that allows you to create 15 seconds video for the sole purpose of encouraging others to post their video reply – the makings of a great viral. “Video editing is unique to BeBirbal so that rather than having to edit the beginning or end of a video like you do in Instagram, a user can select 0.5 second frames of a video to delete multiple frames and produce creative videos”, explains Olly, “BeBirbal is like the perfect mash-up of YouTube and Instagram! And we’d be the best app to support the next viral campaign.”
The app is being targeted at the Snapchat generation, 15-23 years olds, and will be ad-supported. Users can also purchase credits in-app to upload longer videos of upto 30 seconds.
Two-thirds of the world’s mobile data traffic will be videos by 2017. So get the app and start shooting!