Justin.tv have launched a new app called Socialcam – the easiest way to explain it is: Instagram for video – it’s tagline is “the easiest way to share video with friends”.
You can watch their promo video here, embedding doesn’t seem to be a feature of Socialcam just yet.
Justin.tv founder Justin Kan felt that while it was technically possible to share video from your smartphone, there was no easy way to do so socially – email and MMS have size / quality issues, FaceBook video is a bit of a mess still, YouTube have pretty good phone support but falls down socially.
The app is available on both Android and Iphone (Socialcam is a free app) and when you fire it up it asks you to connect with FaceBook to login, the app then asks you to ok the various permissions it needs and once you ok it you’re ready to go.
If you’re familiar with Justin.tv you might be expecting a streaming service, but this app is for sharing recorded video, not for streaming.
Anyway, once you connect you’ll get a list of suggested users – however as the app is brand spanking new, none of my friends were on it yet. Once you click done you’ll be brought to the main interface, which you will be comfortable with if you use Instagram because the UI is pretty similar.
Record a video, and it will begin uploading immediately (meaning a shorter wait time when you’re done). It continues to upload when you’re done recording and you can add a title or tag people in the video while it uploads. Once you’re done with your title and tagging you have the option to share via FaceBook, Twitter, Email or SMS.
Socialcam is focussed on sharing video, so at the moment it is not possible to create a private video but it’s a feature that Justin.tv say they are working on, as well as an export function.
If you want to delete a video, as an iPhone user you will need to go to the socialcam site video page and login using your FaceBook account while Android users can delete from within the application. Can anyone shed some light on why this feature wouldn’t be available on the iPhone?
The interface is extremely easy to use, and I think this app really hits a genuine gap so I think we’re going to see this app take off in a big way over the next few weeks and months.
