FlipTrack launched a product with a unique approach to online slide show creation tonight and I think it could catch on fairly well. It’s a desktop application that combines an interface that looks like Garage Band or Audacity with song lyrics and an image placement tool for users who want more control over their online photo sharing production.
FlipTrack is a division of iPlayMusic, a company that sells Mac guitar tutorial software. That company was founded in 2005 by Stewart Putney and Quincy Carroll. It’s taken a half million dollars in angel funding. You could look at that as a half million dollars invested in MySpace music video slide shows, or you could look at this as one of the media sharing tools of the future in a world where media production has almost no barrier to entry.
The standard practice of setting photos to music in most services starts by determining the order that photos will be shown and then laying a song over the top of the display. FlipTrack users select a song, then see the beat and lyrics displayed in a time line, drag and drop their photos in order and chose between transitions.
FlipTrack has licensed a music library from the karaoke service Sound Choice; options range from Bob Marley’s Buffalo Soldier to Survivor’s Eye of the Tiger to Scooby Doo, Where Are You? and What A Friend We Have In Jesus. Users may not upload their own music. You have to select from the list of about 100 songs but there is a request field to have a song added. As you can see from the screen shot below, lyrics appear above the representation of each song’s beat. At least the company has licensed some popular songs, some similar companies provide nothing but elevator music to choose from.
If you’d like to see an example of a video made with FlipTrack, and you can tolerate the insufferable song “Stroke Me,” the company recommended this video to me.
Strangely, FlipTrack claims to have a patent on displaying music as words and beats instead of waveform, whatever that means. It could be something to remember for the future, it doesn’t sound good to me.
FlipTrack is currently a Windows only desktop client, but is working on a web based version. The limited song choice may need to expand in order for users to really take to the service, but I think it’s got just the right mix of user freedom and restrictive simplicity to gain mass market acceptance. There is some potential here to create some very nice looking slide shows.
Related services include OneTrueMedia, SplashCast, FilmLoop and any number of others. OneTrueMedia seems to me to overlap with FlipTrack quite a bit, but there’s something more serious about the ethos of FlipTrack’s creation tool. I think the potential customer base is large enough that many of these companies could be reasonably viable.
Slide show creation tool Slide.com announced today that it’s raised another round of funding, estimated at $8 million from Mayfield and Khosla, bringing that company to a total of about $20 million in funding. Though Slide was founded by one of the creators of PayPal and Yelp, the technology it’s offering now is less interesting than FlipTrack. Winners and losers in this market will be determined as much by distribution channel, monetization strategies, customer service and luck as by technology.
This looks real cool, but I don’t see a huge advantage to using this vs. creating a full multimedia video in something like MS Movie Maker, where I could use any music I want then just upload it to YouTube? I guess it’s nice that you don’t have to worry about illegally using copyrighted music, but unfortunately the majority of users don’t have this concern.
This looks like a variant of the freeware MemoriesOnWeb (http://www.code...ideshow/mow.htm), which offers more control and uploads seamlessly to YouTube.
This space is getting crowded.
It’s nice to see that innovation is alive and well and has produced a “unique approach to online slide show creation.” With so many talented people out there, it’s disappointing to see less and less true innovation, either on the technology side or the business side. Instead, the Web 2.0 gravy train has encouraged a flood of copycat services that are at best evolutionary and rarely revolutionary. How many slideshow applications and video sharing sites does the world need? These days there seems to be little distinction between a feature and a business.
In my opinion, the Slide funding may be one of the best examples of a bubble and represents everything that’s wrong with venture capital. $20 million for a slideshow/widget company? That in itself is ridiculous. What’s more disappointing is that a renowned VC like Vinod Khosla actually participated in this. It appears first and foremost from the quotes in their press release and on other blogs that the VCs are putting money in because the company was started by Max Levchin. We all know that Max is a smart guy and hit a home run with PayPal. VCs invest primarily in people and Max certainly has a proven track record, but at what point do you stop and say “Okay. This person founded one of the most well-known Internet startups, is extremely intelligent and a very capable founder, but the real business opportunity that exists for his startup is currently lacking and this is not a startup that needs $20 million.” It’s true that a great founder can make a success out of a marginal business while a bad founder can make a failure out of a great business, but the problem here is that there is NO clear business, as evidence from this excerpt from VentureBeat:
“The site lets you push slideshows, onto your blog for example, or to share your favorite photos with friends and family. But it also lets you pull them, accepting a slideshow of images fed from your friends or from your favorite Web sites. It is the latter feature, where people might pull slideshows of products from their favorite retailers, for example, where Slide sees a business model. Slide also lets eBay sellers feature their wares in slideshows. It’s unclear whether Slide has made progress in making money.”
If that business model is the best the PayPal co-founder can do after $12 million, I’m not impressed. By the time you’ve already taken that type of money and have traction on the user acquisition front, you should at least have a very clearly formulated business model and some real market validation of revenue potential. The fact that Slide has a “vision that puts the company at the center of the massive user-generated content trend that drives the fastest growing segment of the Web” is absolutely irrelevant if they have no way of making money.
Max is certainly a wealthy man and if he truly believes in the business potential of this venture, maybe he should put up $20 million himself. Instead of doing that, he takes money from VCs and gives Khosla a wondeful compliment by saying that he “grasped” his vision for slides faster than other VCs. Wow. Perhaps this old boys network of VCs and the entrepreneuers they don’t hesitate to fund is the reason that more and more entreprenuers are passing up the VCs and are building startups without their help?
At least in Bubble 1.0 $20 million would have gotten you a piece of a real money-losing *business*. Today it buys you a money-losing widget. A fool and his money are soon parted indeed.
IMHO, FilmLoop is still a winner among all. FilmLoop has two advantages:
(1) They let creators post HTML Code to their sites and play it within their sites.
(I created my first FilmLoop a year ago http://www.gonc.../Omoeymame.html,
and at that time they already had this helpful feature).
This feature is something, I am sure others will catch up with soon.
(2) It is (co?) funded by Guy Kawasaki, charismatic leader. Charisma is half of success in today’s web. Also, Guy’s popular blog certainly helps as a marketing channel.
Monetization strategies. .. man I wonder what that’s going to be.
Hmm, lovely pictures of family and friends, then finished off with an ad for McDonalds.
if I don’t use background music, it seems I can’t make a slide show. and can I easily remix different music into one show?
Natasha: it’s very interesting that you recognize the fact that charisma is half of success in today’s web. Getting funding is part of success, and I am in the process of writing a book about this. If you’ve read the widly popular book “The Game: Penetrating the Secret Society of Pickup Artists”, you’ll love my book, which is called “The Game 2.0: Penetrating the Secret Society of Venture Capitalists.” As the name implies, it applies the same pickup artist dynamic to venture capitalists. With some charisma and an understanding of human pyschology it is possible to achieve great success in raising the funding necessary to make it in today’s web. I can literally walk into any VC office on Sand Hill Road and come out with a million dollar check 15 minutes later using the same techniques that pickup artists use to charm women. It’s really amazing. Last week I used neurolinguistic programming on a VC at one of Google’s early investors to evoke, on a subconscious level, the same emotions he felt when Google went public and came away with $15 million for my client, who is building a mashup tool that allows you to embed your profile from one social network within your profile on another social network.
I also agree that having a link on a VC’s blog is a key to success and that FilmLoop is the market leader because of the traffic Guy’s blog drives to them. In fact, I encourage all entrepreneurs to demand that their investment term sheet include a provision that if the VC has a blog, he add a link to your website on it. This can be a tough sell, but if you read my upcoming book you can charm them into giving you this concession.
I spent about 20 minutes with FlipTracks Technology this morning. I’ve used another player’s tech in this market and FlipTrack is by far the most intuitive. From the second I downloaded the application to my first upload of my final picture video took only 20 minutes. The second video I made took only 10. I am a HUGE fan of Fliptrack and believe the company is a winner. I’m excited to see what’s to come.
Youtube is by far the leader in videos. You can’t argue that. But…. What about the people that don’t use video cameras and just take still photos. This is a MUCH bigger market. These days everyone has a pocket sized camera with them just about everywhere they go. Go to a party and look around the room. 90% of the people have cameras. You may only see a few people with actual video cameras. I’m a BIG Believer in this market and I think it gives people like me (who just take pictures) a very cool and fun way to put my pictures to music and really create an experience around the pictures.
I LOVE IT!
What’s the point?No business model and no innovation. Please don’t tell me the video/photo editor is innovation. Sorry I’ll stick to real apps.
Innovation comes in different forms. I’m sure you understand that Rome was not built in a day…. Show me an app that allows you to plug in pics to the beat or lyric of a song. I think this is innovative. Sure it isn’t changing the world. But it’s a step in the right direction!
Not a bad idea. I like the reversal of the traditional photos overlaid with music.