Viddy, maker of the eponymous short-form video app, today unveiled the final touches on a new mission, some new products and a new name.
Supernova, as the Venice company will be called henceforth, is no longer a maker of one product, but a producer of a handful of multimedia apps, all with a focus on social sharing.
The first apps in the company’s new lineup are Epic and Clique. With Epic, a riff on the short, sharable videos concept that Viddy pioneered, users take 2-second videos at high frame rates, which are then slowed down and stretched into 8-second slo-mo clips.
The Apple iOS app is designed for iPhone models dating back to iPhone 4, and takes particular advantage of the new 120 frames-per-second feature introduced in the recently released iPhone 5S.
Videos shot in Epic can be posted to YouTube, Twitter or shared onto the Viddy network, which will retain its name. As Supernova Chief Executive JJ Aguhob explained, Epic’s videos are silent and looping, mimicking the aesthetics of GIFs – a file format for moving images that have become wildly popular online.
If Epic is a play on GIFs, Clique is a mixture between to the ephemeral image messaging popularized by Snapchat and the anonymous confessions of Whisper.
With Clique, a person takes a picture then manipulates the image with certain effects, such as stickers, drawings and text. These pictures are then shared to a group of friends, who can respond in turn with their own doodles over the original image or with a separate photo. Responses are anonymous, as in Whisper, and once an image is viewed it cannot be seen again, a la Snapchat.
Aguhob said the company will be releasing more apps in a similar vein in the coming months. The company does not have a monetization plan for Epic or Clique in place yet.
As Viddy, the company went through a well-documented arc of stratospheric success and funding followed by a plunge in traffic. Brett O’Brien, a founder and chief executive was ousted earlier this year, Aguhob took over and much of the investment capital was returned.
