Insight Venture Partners-Backed GenArts, Inc.® Expands Into Social Video, Introduces Vivoom

CAMBRIDGE, Mass., Jan. 23, 2013 /PRNewswire/ -- GenArts, Inc., the global leader in specialized visual effects software, today announced its entrance into the social video market with Vivoom—a simple but powerful video enhancer. Vivoom is designed to inspire social networkers to share the video they are capturing, some eight-billion-plus videos that went unshared last year. Vivoom lets anyone fix, style, and personalize from within social networking sites, blogs and video sharing sites. For the first time, everyone can make every video look measurably better, every time. Vivoom's enhancer will debut with its first partner, a major video-sharing site, shortly. A standalone application for web and mobile will be available this spring.

Vivoom makes everyone want to share the video they've already captured because it improves the quality of each video. Enabling consumers to improve quality is critical to unlocking social video: more than 80 percent of social networkers would share the video they take if they could easily make it look "good." Vivoom offers a fun and engaging experience that produces superior results, so people are more likely to share their video and viewers will watch it for longer.

"Making video look good is a really complex problem," says Katherine Hays, CEO of Vivoom. "But we've found that quality is absolutely critical for people to be willing to share the video they capture and for their friends and family to be excited to watch. Consumers can see the difference in quality and it matters. For video, there are two critical dimensions of quality: one is measurable and influences behavior; the other is highly subjective and dictated by personal style. For social video to take off, a solution needs to solve for both."

That seemingly small difference in quality has a dramatic effect on social video sharing. Today, the average person has nearly 20 videos on their phones that they have taken but never shared because they simply don't look good enough. Vivoom measurably improves the quality of these videos and motivates consumers to share them. After enhancing with Vivoom, more than 90% of consumers actually share the video they create and viewers watch those videos 20-40% longer. As a result, viewers are more likely to comment or "like" Vivoom videos, giving users the social payoff they want while inspiring a virtual cycle of video sharing.

This effect on user behavior significantly impacts how people use video in social media and could increase the number of social videos shared from 1 billion today to 30 billion per year. For the digital media companies that integrate Vivoom, engaged users and reduced abandonment translates into significant financial gains. For example, a 10% reduction in viewer abandonment could net an additional $650 million in revenue per month for YouTube alone.

Vivoom is able to improve quality in a way that changes consumer behavior with an intuitive solution that gives users the tools and confidence to share more with video.  Only Vivoom gives users access to the largest selection of the best-performing video filters called Looks, suggests relevant design choices for each user's video, and makes it fast, easy and fun to improve quality.

By partnering with Vivoom, digital media companies can give their users the tools they need to make the video they capture look better. Vivoom's video enhancer seamlessly integrates into each partner's existing look and feel through a fully-customizable API. Vivoom will launch with its first partner soon and expects to release a standalone solution later this spring.

Incubated within high-end visual effects pioneer GenArts, Vivoom has an exclusive license to their world-class visual effects engine and related technology. GenArts has been used by the most discerning video creators at top TV, film, and video production companies like Sony Imageworks, Warner Brothers, NBC, ABC, ESPN, HBO, Disney, The Mill, Weta Digital, and many more since 1996.

About Vivoom™
Vivoom is the only cloud-based video enhancer that lets you make each video you've captured one you're happy to share. Vivoom helps you create stunning video that your friends will notice and appreciate. Your video not only looks dramatically better every time but also reflects your style because Vivoom suggests a set of Looks specific to you and your video context from a portfolio of thousands of the world's best-performing Looks. Founded in 2012, Vivoom seamlessly integrates into digital media sites so their users can create more engaging video their friends will love to watch. www.vivoom.co

SOURCE GenArts, Inc.