Amazon has taken a special interest in one of its web service customers: Animoto, the machine-driven music video creator that launched last August and now has over 160,000 users. The online retail giant has decided to fund the startup with an undisclosed amount of money.
Animoto takes photo and music files from users and essentially turns them into souped up slideshows with background music that synchronizes with effects and transitions. The service uses Amazon’s SQS, S3 and EC2 to store the requisite files and process the videos.
Cloud computing has been so vital to Animoto’s operations that Jeff Bezos even used the company as example of how well EC2 helps web apps scale when their traffic hockey sticks (in Animoto’s case, when its Facebook app took off last month).
To celebrate Animoto’s new influx of money, I’ve compiled the following video with background music by Pink Floyd. My only quibbles when putting it together include the inability to use PNG files or search for photos on Flickr by tag.
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Search does not work on techcrunch. It is not getting fixed for past three months now. I am saying it again and again.
excellent! Animoto rocks!
I’m not surprises that someone is interested in Animoto, I’m just surprised it’s Amazon…
Anyway, great news for them, it really is a unique service!
http://www.tech-exposed.com
I’ve never used them. Guess I’ll give them a look now.
How can I get Amazon to invest in me??
I’ve been using Animoto since the early days. It was great then, brilliant now, and more to come.
But the blank green screen is a hopeless teaser. Is adding a snapshot of the content really such a tech hurdle?
Jeff Bezos was hanging next to me at SXSW where i met the animoto guys. I realize now it might not have been a total coincidence
With our cash infusion we are planning on hiring a cadre of developers to tackle the green screen conundrum, and another group to solve the mysterious PNG problem :).
Seriously, we’re all excited to get a bit more money in the door so we can bring more people on board, release more features, and keep on innovating. And Carlton, we chose the green screen specifically because of its “movie trailer” feel (and coincidentally it matches the TC color scheme nicely!), but we’re always open to suggestions. You can send all burning desires for specific features to feedback@animoto.com.
-stevie, animoto cto
I don’t have any insight in their finances, but I can guess it was either boom or bust for them: They use (or used) 4000 EC2 instances, according to the Rightscale blog: http://blog.rightscale.com/200.....-scale-up/
While this is much cheaper than buying 4000 servers, it would cost them a minimum of $288.000/month, without bandwidth or storage fees. That’s quite a burn rate for a small startup.
On the other hand, with that growth rate, they are one of the best showcases of Amazons platforms scalability. Without Amazon I think the company could have never managed scaling from a few to thousands of servers in a few weeks. So it makes sense for Amazon to keep them alive.
Not saying they don’t have a cool service, I love their success story, it’s one of the great examples of cloud computing.
Really???
Animoto funded by Amazon? Why…..
The application is fun to use - about one time. After that it is boring….Would love to see the abondment rate after initial use.
Also - love how TechCrunch is using the Pink Floyd song “money” on it’s home page. Does TechCrunch have the rights to use that song in a public forum? Does Animoto own the rights? Does Amazon own the rights?
That is one of the major problems of the application is the viral use of artists music - people don’t own the rights to use virally!!
So this will be perfect for Amazon since they have deep pockets and can afford to settle a massive lawsuit.
Congrats on the investment! Hope you are working on incorporating video and have to agree that thsearching of Flickr by Tag would be Huge. You could add a tag like am1 or anything to pick each photo you wanted to use and not have to move them into a set (on top of just the tagging you already have done).
Keep up the great work.
Molly
PS. I am an unlimited member and the service rocks!
So now we know what the real reason for the Amazon cloud is:
- Crowdsource idea development, by making the entrepreneur pay for the infrastructure cost.
- When something becomes successful (only 1/1000 consumer apps do), acquire a stake in it
- Wait and pray for an exit, all the while covering the cost of the cloud from other operations
- Profit!
So Amazon is using their cloud as a form of venture capital. Brilliant
Congrats to Animoto on their financing…they’re sharp folks, I know they’ll use it well.
I’m impressed their technology was able to detect the odd time signature of that Pink Floyd song. Most drummer’s can’t even do that
To Comment #8 above: AINAL, but I think the 30 second song sample would fall under “Fair Use” due to it’s short length. Animoto also has longer videos so that would still be an issue…
If you are looking to create slick stuff, quickly in less time then it would take to finish a cup of joe - my God man- Animoto rocks!.
Just waiting for the higher quality video files for full screen use that is on the horizon.
Unlimited member and its been great.
J
Congratulations to our friends at Animoto on getting funded. These guys keep us on our toes!
Phillip Molly Malone and Batterylife: If you are looking for music video mashups for your videos AND photos in several unique styles, try muvee (www.muvee.com)
Started by a bunch of musician-researcher-geeks, we have been doing this for 7 years now. Our technology powers the music video creation on Nokia and LG phones and Nikon S-Series Cameras. Our PC apps are installed on HP Consumer notebooks and desktops. We recently launched an online version of it here: http://www.shwup.com
Try it and let us know what you think. Its in beta, and we are putting more features each month.
TS (founder-CEO, muvee) (San Francisco/Singapore/Tokyo/Seoul)