Ages ago there was a little service called Animoto that offered to make magic out of your photos turning them into ready-made professional videos. “Professional” was the operative word and they delivered. And then Apple ruined the fun by making iMovie (and yes even iPhoto) more interesting with new effects, taking something that was cloud based and turning it into a desktop app. When you’re dealing with a lot of photos, we can forget the cloud for a while.
And Microsoft’s in it too. Ever tried their new versions of Movie Maker? It’s mind blowing as well.
There’s nothing wrong with services like Animoto. In fact, startups like these make the Internet awesome. But what happens when the big boys copy these amazing ideas and incorporate them into their already existing services? For one, they scale better. I used to have a one year free service at Animoto and now my account has been severely crippled into a 30 second teaser. Not with iMovie on the Mac. They both have drag + drop functionality and they both can end up on YouTube. One is just, free. Forever.
And it is things like these that make me wish services like YouSendIt or Dropbox continue to offer amazing services for free (no payment tiers) because they don’t need to scale. But they do and that, I guess, is the road to startup perdition.
Photos used are from the 2012 AXE Cream Ball to celebrate the Final Edition. It’s the new gold one you can find in stores. It smells epic.