In its persistent quest to make the world a more distracting place, technology has blessed us with a perfect way to waste time: Cabana, Tumblr’s first standalone app.
Tumblr was written down last year as a stunning $482 million loss by parent company Yahoo, a mere three years after acquiring it. But now they’re back with something new.
Cabana is essentially an app that allows you to watch YouTube videos with up to six friends simultaneously. Or how Ryan Hoover of Product Hunt put it, “Very similar to Houseparty but focused on watching (cat) videos together,” which sounds pretty much as how I’d use it.
Tumblr CEO David Karp shared the reasoning behind the new app with BuzzFeed:
“Sure, you can share a video over text or email. But the [better] experience [is] finding that extraordinary video that’s fascinating or hilarious or profound, and dragging your friends over to your computer to watch, or pulling it up on your phone and putting it in their faces so they see it. Being there while they watch it for the first time – that experience of watching them experience it for the first time – that’s a human experience that everybody’s gone through at this point.”
Interestingly, this adds another layer to the video experience online. We started out watching videos. Then we started watching videos of people watching videos. And now, thanks to this app that “‘tested really well’ with 13- to 18-year-olds,” humankind has added the ability to watch five of our friends react to one video of someone reacting to another video.
Next step, I imagine, would be to record that, upload it, and have six more people watch it on Cabana and record that, etc, ad infinitum. Can’t wait.
Cabana is available in the App Store, and the Android version should be out in a few weeks.
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