Givit has announced a significant new update to its video-editing app at SXSW in Austin today, one that gives its social credentials a major shot in the arm.
Just to recap, it’s been more than a year since we last caught up with Givit, an app that lets you create videos and share them with individuals in private. We wrote at the time:
“For the past few years the Internet as a whole has been all about making your content more public. Between Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and others, the idea was that you should share as widely as you possibly could. But in recent months there has been a decided shift toward more personal content, shared privately to smaller groups. Givit is a site, for video, which lets you do just that.”
However, Givit was Web-only back then and, in the period since, it has launched a native iOS app with Facebook and YouTube sharing, and then rolled out Twitter sharing (including support for Twitter Cards) in late 2012, with additional SkyDrive and DropBox integration. Now, Givit is going the extra mile on the social front with version 3.0.
Givit 3.0
The app help you gather all those videos on your device (or shoot new ones), through editing and building something a little more enticing to share with friends – that much you knew already. But now it’s morphing into something of an in-app social network, with users able to create personal profiles with their own Givit handle.
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Users can also follow each other directly within the app, with the activity stream revealing all recent, well, activity. This includes who’s started following you, and anyone who’s ‘liked’ a specific video, and you see all the videos you’ve ‘liked’ by clicking the little ‘heart’ icon at the bottom.
Users can also share videos within the app’s new public feeds, while they can also submit videos to an all-new ‘What’s Hot’ list, which may end up being highlighted for other Givit folks to find.
Users are notified when new videos arrive, and can discover new nuggets via the ‘Popular’ feed, or browse trending Categories. And if you feel compelled to comment on videos, well, you can.
For example, a singer-songwriter could create a mobile video profile for himself within the app, promote their other social profiles and thus engage with more people across more networks. Indeed, while the app isn’t aimed solely at those in the music fraternity, it’s clear that this is a key demographic for the service, and it certainly lends itself well to bands capturing snippets of rehearsals, live-shows and everything in between, to quickly share with fans. Though it’s worth noting here that this equally works in reverse, with fans able to film things from their perspective, and throw clips together.
While Givit is realizing the role of ‘social’, there are still options for private-sharing for those times when you’d rather keep your, shall we say, more ‘amateur’ and rough-edits away from the masses. Essentially, the app enables anyone to shoot and mix clips on the move, directly from their iPhone, iPod touch or iPad. And share them with the world, too.
In addition to the new social direction, Givit has also rolled out an updated UI and layout, so things will look a little different too with this latest incarnation.
“Givit empowers artists to supercharge their fan bases with the power of video,” says Greg Kostello, CEO and Founder of Givit. “Anyone can now create an amazing music video or reimagine their favorite moments right from their iPhone, adding new clips, sound or transitions and share socially however they choose.”
Based in San Diego, Givit is backed by ATA Ventures and JK&B Ventures. It offers 5GB of cloud storage for free to each member, though premium subscriptions are available for power-users starting from $29.99 a year.
Givit v3.0 is available to download for free now.
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Feature Image Credit – Thinkstock
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