Qualcomm & Sandisk Support Plan To Unlock World’s Videos

There has been a boom in the number of mobile apps that allow users to shoot, edit and then share their videos. With the release of video for Instagram came a number of new social video apps, one of which was Magisto, who created an app that was designed to take existing videos stored on a computer or phone and turn them into a mix of interesting videos.

Although initially Magisto seemed to be lagging behind all the other startup social video apps, it appears that the company has caught up after posting incredible growth. Now it has managed to raise $13 million and plans to unlock all the world’s videos and photos, making them sharable.

The funds raised have come from two major strategic investors – Qualcomm Ventures and Sandisk, who will join with existing investors Magma Venture Partner and Li Ka Shing’s Horizons Ventures.

Currently the 13 million users won over by Magisto are able to create sharable videos and photo slideshows from their existing videos and photos. These can then be shared on social networks or individuals. All of this is made possible by proprietary algorithms, which piece together multiple video and photo assests.

However, there is more potential for peoples’ videos and photos as Magisto’s CEO and co-founder Oren Boiman points out:

“Not [even] 1% of this material has ever left its SD card,” he wrote by email. “If Magisto can mobilize a few percent of this huge data, internet will be entirely different and it will shift the focus onto what is what actually important to us, our life experiences, our shared memories, our stories.”

It begins to make sense why Qualcomm and Sandisk would invest in this project, seeing as they make the chips and storage products where all of these unused photos and videos are kept.

[Image via Pandodaily]

SOURCE: http://techcrunch.com/2013/10/29/magisto-13m-qualcomm-sandisk/