Animoto Beats Slide at Their Own Game
Posted by Nick O'Neill on April 21st, 2008 10:15 AMA little over a month ago I announced the launch of the Animoto Facebook application. At the time I suggested that this application could easily become a competitor to Slide’s primary application that became popularized via millions of MySpace profiles. Well it looks as though my prediction has come true. Animoto is now the 16th largest application based on daily active users and the application continues to grow.
While Slide has over 10 times the number of active users that Animoto currently has on Facebook, Animoto has destroyed Slide when it comes to their own game: slide shows. A quick look at Slide’s Slide Shows application shows a measly 3,000 active daily users and horrible reviews. Does this mean the end of Slide? Definitely not but it definitely means the beginning of a new leader in the dynamic slideshow space.
Animoto differentiates itself from others (dynamic flash based slideshows) by actually creating a rendered video of your photos intermixed with audio. You can choose to upload your own audio content or you can select from their library. This application is a perfect example of an application that succeeded even with a late entry to the platform. If you spend time developing valuable applications that help users express themselves more effectively, you will surely have a popular application on your hands. If you haven’t had the opportunity to check out Animoto, go install the Animoto Facebook application.
As a sample of what can be produced I have included a video of a Social Times party I threw at the end of last year.
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If you look at the forum, you'll see user comments like:
"Exactly. I uncheck all but the required box and I was VERY confused when I saw that I has notified about 30 of my friends. VERY RUDE and I am NOT impressed."
So if they're beating Slide at any game, it's the SPAM game.
Nice to see a quality app made...not so nice to see it so spammy and auto-notifying all your friends that you don't even tag. If I wanted to sent notifications or invites I would.
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This is Tom, one of the guys over at Animoto. Thanks for the candid feedback, and I totally hear ya: right now our protocol upon installing the app isn't ideal. In fact, it rather sucks. What it does when you install the app is to automatically make a video using your FB images (and also ones that you're tagged in) and then notifies the people that are in that vid that they've been tagged. At first we just thought this would be a good idea because a good portion of our users weren't even making videos, so we thought, "Hey, let's just make one automatically for them"--but since that then automatically tags that user's friends, we've run into some problems and received some pretty negative feedback (yours included).
We're working on a bunch of changes that will be live later today so that we hopefully don't run into this awkward situation again. Sorry about the inconvenience/embarrassment you experienced. We don't like to run the shady viral game, and would much rather been seen as protectors of the user experience.
Thanks,
TOM
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I found it not just embarrassing, but actually humiliating, to inadvertently spread the virus to 15 of my minor students (I'm an adult). It seemed like a gross violation of my privacy.
You've done significant damage by this viral mischief. You guys should be ashamed.
-BD
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