VodPod Founders Launch Showyou, A Flipboard-Like Social Video App For iOS
Online video startup Vodpod is launching a new app today, Showyou, which is essentially a Flipboard for videos. Launched as a free iOS app for the iPad, iPhone and iPad touch; Showyou allows you to access …
Context & Ripple Effects
Flipboard spent late 2010 proving the social-magazine format on the iPad, broadening its input pipes with [[a:none|placeholder]] integrations for Google Reader and Flickr confirmed in December 2010. Vodpod — until now known as a video bookmarking service — is applying that same curation layer to video, launching Showyou as a free iOS app across iPad, iPhone and iPod touch.
The launch also lands in the middle of a distribution argument: Robert Scoble's same-day piece frames AirPlay as 'the most important new protocol since RSS,' grouping Showyou among the apps using it to change how people watch TV — meaning Showyou's bet is not just curation but the iPad-and-AirPlay living room as a new viewing surface.
First-order effects
- Vodpod repositions itself from backend bookmarking utility to consumer-facing brand overnight, putting its founders' curation technology directly on the iPad home screen next to Flipboard rather than behind other sites' video players.
- Video publishers and social feeds gain a new aggregated distribution surface: Showyou surfaces friends' shares in a browsable grid, so any creator whose clips circulate socially gets iPad exposure without building an iOS presence themselves.
Second-order effects
- Flipboard faces a category question its December 2010 integrations only sharpened: if the magazine-format reader works for video as well as text and photos, Flipboard must either add richer video treatment or concede that segment to specialists like Showyou.
- Apple's AirPlay becomes a competitive filter — per Scoble's framing, apps that stream curated video to the television differentiate against ones confined to the device screen, making protocol access part of app strategy.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, the tablet era produces a curator tier between social graphs and content owners — companies whose value is packaging shared media, not producing it — repeating at video scale what Flipboard did for news.
- Discovery power drifting toward aggregation layers pressures video platforms to treat third-party readers as channels to court or choke, an unresolved governance question for whoever controls the feed.
The trend: Magazine-style curation interfaces pioneered by Flipboard are spreading from text into video, turning tablets and AirPlay-connected TVs into curated viewing surfaces built on social sharing.