There’s no shortage of ‘social/mobile/location-based’ video sharing apps out there, which will let you take a video and maybe slap a filter on it and share what you’re doing with people nearby and show off how friggin cool you are. Think Socialcam/Viddy/Klip/etc. But how social is that, really?
Well how about this: What if you could actually make videos that were TRULY social, that combined elements from videos that you’ve shot, as well as those from your friends and other people nearby? What if you could instantly mash up, remix, and share those videos with people on other social networks? That’s the kind of experience that the makers of the Vyclone iPhone app have created.
Vyclone takes advantage of location data to determine who you’re nearby while you’re shooting video in its app. It then matches that video against other users nearby. The app allows the creation of videos using up to four different camera angles at once, and includes the ability to switch between filters to provide different effects. Once videos are shot and uploaded to the server, the app syncs them up based on the timestamp and then stitches them together randomly, keeping the audio track of one of the videos.
One of the cool things is that Vyclone can be used even when you don’t have WiFi or a good wireless connection. While it’s nice to get the sort of instant gratification that comes from instantly uploading videos and having mashups created on the fly, the app works even when videos aren’t available in real-time. It merely checks the location and timestamp of available videos, regardless of when they’re uploaded. That means that you could add them days later, and Vyclone would still make new mixes based on new assets.
Once created, Vyclone has all the usual viewing and sharing options you’ve come to expect from these types of apps: You can share on Facebook or Twitter or save to your camera roll. Then, it can also be uploaded to YouTube. Users can also watch videos shared by other users inside the app, tag friends and events, comment on videos, and follow other users.
So I’ve taken a lot of video apps for a spin in my day, and I have to say that in my limited test run, Vyclone is seriously one of the coolest apps I’ve ever tried out. I used with a friend it last weekend during an event in Oakland, and captured video from an event in which a music video was being filmed.* This was the final result, as shot from two different camera angles while screwing around with filters:
Concerts and music festivals are an obvious use case for this type of video app, but users could also use it at sporting events and even in smaller groups. Think about capturing different angles at a birthday party or wedding, maybe? Anyway, the app currently supports just four videos being mixed today, but the founders tell me that the backend is infinitely scalable — which means that it could potentially mash up dozens of videos, like at a big Jason Mraz concert or whatnot.
Speaking of, the founders include Joe Sumner, musician and Chief Creative Officer (and Sting’s son), who dreamed up the idea. He tapped his good friend David King Lassman, CEO of Vyclone, to help execute on the plan. The company has an office in Los Angeles and a development team in London building the app. Vyclone has raised $2.7 million in seed funding from investors that include Ashton Kutcher’s A-GRade Investments, Live Nation, DWA Investments, and Thrive Capital.
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* Yes, those are women punching at each other with gigantic blowup boxing gloves. The event was entitled Foxy Boxing, and the artist featured here is Big Freedia, Queen Diva and New Orleans bounce music extraordinaire. What can I say, I do stupid shit on the weekends.