French video streaming giant Dailymotion today announced that it will collaborate with Joshfire, the app creation service, to bring video app-creation capabilities to Dailymotion users in based in the US.
The Dailymotion website in the US will now feature a special Joshfire Factory dashboard. The dashboard contains simple, everyman-friendly tools that enable developers and ordinary fans alike to design mobile apps with streaming and social sharing functionality for Android, iOS, Connected TVs, or mobile browsers.
By allowing content creators to easily make specialized, branded apps featuring their videos on the platform, Dailymotion and Joshfire can help artists and brands reach their fans at any given time and place. This would in theory be an additional incentive for brands to embrace to the platform and post content on it.
Dailymotion and Joshfire first introduced this service to the European market in autumn of last year at TedxParis, but today marks the first day of its operations in North America.
The video below, originally published upon its European launch, shows the service in action.
Dailymotion & Joshfire by joshfire_factory
The first American company to make use of the new functionality is Luaka Bop, a world music record label which used Dailymotion’s Joshfire dashboard to make an app featuring its full video library from Dailymotion, in addition to tour dates and social feeds.
The move marks another initiative by Dailymotion to beef up its ecosystem as it competes with the beast that is YouTube. Last year saw a major revamp of its iOS app, and last February, the company announced a partnership with OpenVoD enabling the sale and purchase of content.
Earlier this year, Dailymotion attracted attention in the tech community when it was reported that it was in talks with Yahoo over a potential acquisition by the latter. That deal might have led Dailymotion to grow in the US, however, it was struck down by the French government not long after its rumors surfaced.
As of January 2013, Dailymotion attracts over 116 million unique monthly visitors and 2.5 million video views worldwide. While it continues to trail YouTube in popularity (which receives over 1 billion unique visitors each month), the site has made a concerted effort to present itself as a cleaner alternative to its competitor, which, for better or for worse, can feel quite chaotic.
Image Credit: ERIC PIERMONT/AFP/Getty Images
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