ViiF Launches Platform For Mobile Video Sharing
Semi-social mobile video community ViiF has publicly launched yesterday. ViiF lets you record video calls from your mobile phone, watch them later and share them with your friends.
No additional software is required, all you need is an UMTS enabled phone which supports video calls. Once you have called the service the video is recorded and stored in your inbox. You can mark it as private, public or make the access available to your friends only. You also can include your videos via a widget (ViiF Player) on your blog.
The video calls will be 39c/min with operators who will support the service. Currently O2 and Vodaphone are in, T-Mobile still charges 58c/min and e-plus does not support the service yet. Their business model is based on sharing the revenue made from the calls with the operators.
For the users this is both good and bad news. To steal the plot from twitter: when you see a monkey walking down the street it is definitely worth the money to stream the scene as video to ViiF instead of sending a plain text message to twitter or a MMS to your friends. From a receivers point of view watching those videos from your friends soon might add up. I haven’t found out whether it is possible to watch the videos from your friends on the site, but they heavily encourage everyone to watch the videos on their phone (e.g. when you recommend your video they will get a SMS and the video will be displayed when they call ViiF and enter a PIN.)
ViiF currently is available in Germany only, they will roll out the service to the UK, France, Italy and Spain in 2008.
Related article: ViiF Recieves Funding
(This article originally was written for blognation Germany. Since blognation is gone I have reposted it here)