It’s no surprise that Animoto’s new video product is a hit. Upload a few short videos and images, add a song, click a button and bam, you’ve got a very high quality souvenir of your recent holiday or other event. Here’s one I put together for Foo Camp in August. More examples are here.
So far it’s a one-size-fits-all product. And since it’s such a good one no one is complaining. But there have been requests for holiday themed platforms, says CEO Brad Jefferson. And so on December 1 they’ll release themed templates for various holidays. The new product will be called Animoto Originals, and the video above is an example.
Look for holiday and life event themed templates (Christmas, weddings, etc.). Short videos are free. Full length videos (the length of a song) are $3 each, or you can buy a yearly subscription. My parents loved one holiday video I made so much that I had a DVD of it sent to them for $20 – which is another revenue source for the company.
Animoto is profitable and has over 1 million registered users. 10% of those users have purchased a product, either a subscription or one time video purchase. Short videos remain free. They’ve also started signing partners to make photo and video sharing easier. Last month they announced deals with SmugMug and Life.com.
What I’d really like to see is some sort of partnership with Someecards. But perhaps that’s too much to hope for.
Looks interesting for folks love to play around their electronic holiday cards and send out in bulk to relatives and friends with multimedia and lots of pix!
Looks interesting this post tanks for this the video is very good !
This sounds like it could be a real hit, particularly Christmas time, Valentines Day and similar holidays when buyers are at their most generous. It looks like real fun as your Foo Camp example shows.
I tried Animoto month ago and was really impressed. Simple to use. Cool products.
good to know that a company like Animoto is making a profit. They thoroughly deserve to be successful
Awesome! Looks very promising, perfect and very timely.
Just tried the service. I first thought that the one template fits all would be a bit frustrating but got really impressed by the result. Did this video in a few seconds (http://tinyurl.com/yaaaacv). Very cool.
Looking forward the holiday features.
Funny, it looks like they ripped off SilkTricky.com for the style of the product promo video:
Watch this: http://silktricky.com/ and then watch the animoto promo at the top of this post.
Forrest:
Have you watched a movie trailer recently? It’s a pretty standard format to tell a story. You can’t go around calling people rip-offs just because they adopt a certain format. What matters more is the content.
Think about how all the touch screen phones out there ‘ripped off’ iPhone’s square-button-laid-out-on-a-grid format for their UI.
I’ve been a customer for a little under a year now and both my wife an I are hooked on their platform. It’s so incredibly easy to use, and everyone enjoys the production value. I recommend them to anyone every chance I get. Christmas cards should be fun to do this year.
Animoto is great until you read their terms. Once you stop paying them for the business membership you have to stop using the videos you have produced. Its crazy.
http://feedback...pires?ref=title
@Jon, thanks for your feedback and staying after us on this topic. Usage of our Pro package quickly expanded beyond our initial conception of the product so we’ve now modified our commercial terms to ensure professional users have more flexibility with our Pro product. Specifically, as of today, you can now continue to use your Animoto videos for commercial purposes after your account lapses as long as you download the videos before your account lapses.
Thanks, Brad
CEO & Co-founder, Animoto
This looks great. I’m going to give it a try