Poptiq Recommends Video for iPhone Users
We’ve been bummed about the dearth of video apps for the iPhone, so I was intrigued to speak with the people at Poptiq, a startup that wants to be the mobile video equivalent of Last FM and TiVo.
Like LastFM, Poptiq is a recommendation service, but it promises to learn your viewing likes and dislikes to deliver highly-personal videos instead of music. The TiVo comparison comes in because the app downloads video (via WiFi) and caches it to your device’s hard drive, so you can watch without being interrupted by drops in signal reception.
Poptiq will pull video in the background while you’re watching video or while the device is idle and the app is running. You can share videos with friends through Facebook or MySpace and videos not saved or shared are automatically deleted after 24 hours.
After watching a video, you tell the app whether you want more or less of that kind and it will go out and pull down videos from the likes of Revver, YouTube and Metacafe. The service believes that the sweet spot for mobile video is the semi-pro content producer (like What the Buck’s Michael Buckley, whom they hired to create the service’s intro video). Right now Poptiq does not have official relationships with any video sites; its just scraping the video off of them.
Waterloo, Ontario-based Metranome is the company behind Poptiq, and was founded a little over a year ago by ex-Research in Motion (BlackBerry) employees. The company is seed funded from a local Canadian VC and has 8 employees. Poptiq went live at the Apple App Store on Sept. 4, and though the company wouldn’t divulge how many users it has, its says it’s in the “tens of thousands” (but hasn’t hit the 100,00 mark yet).
Poptiq’s business model is currently up in the air. Unsure of whether to go with an ad-supported or a paid subscription service, the company threw it out to its users via a survey, which strikes us as either lazy, or emblematic of a service that is not long for this world.
Josh Pigford over at our sister publication The Apple Blog, told us he tried it out but felt it was confusing and difficult to use.
Popular
- Tumblr Marriage Proposal: Behind the Scenes of Justin and Marissa's Engagement
- BitTorrent After The Pirate Bay: Do You Still Need Trackers?
- Ten Sites for Free and Legal Torrents
- The Megawoosh Waterslide Viral: How It Was Really Done
- Nielsen: Facebook Now the No. 3 Video Site
- Six Steps To Get More HD From Your Scientific Atlanta Set-top Box
Recent
Network
- Earth2Tech Week in Review [Earth2Tech]
- WWD Weekend Reading List [WebWorkerDaily]
- Google’s Past Failures Offer Perspective on Chrome OS Release [GigaOM]
- WinMo Wrap: Marketplace Hits All WM 6.x Phones; Opera Mobile Advances [jkOnTheRun]
- Weekly App Store Picks: November 21, 2009 [TheAppleBlog]
- Get Ready for Flash Player 10.1 to Stream P2P Video to Millions, Swap Files BitTorrent-style [NewTeeVee]
© 2009 The GigaOM Network. Marketing consulting by ACS.
This seems like pretty smart software. Another method of video distribution – it can’t hurt, right?
Chris – thanks for telling everyone about Poptiq. As you mentioned, we have had some really great traction with our first release. I’ll openly admit that our ‘1.0′ isn’t perfect (is anyone’s?), but those that have had the chance to play with it and give it a bit of time are really enjoying the results. Plus, the user feedback we have been receiving on both features, pricing, and content are driving our next releases – and we’re quite excited about that. Thanks again for the feedback and looking forward to hearing more.