MixBit: YouTube Founders Release New Video App Encouraging Sharing And Remixing

A new contender has entered the smartphone video app arena to take on the current dominators, Vine and Instagram. But this newcomer, MixBit, is no lightweight.

To start, MixBit’s creators, Chad Hurley and Steve Chen, learned a bit about digital video when they founded a little website known as YouTube. MixBit also lets users record up to an hour worth of video, compared with just six seconds on Vine and 15 seconds on Instagram. Finally, Mixbit comes packed with features that allow users to edit videos, combine clips, add in video clips from other users and share them in chunks of any length.

Hurley and Chen have one more tool they didn’t have when starting YouTube -- the financial backing of Google (NASDAQ:GOOG), which they sold their brainchild to in 2006 for $1.65 billion. According to the New York Times, the Mountain View, Calif.-based search engine giant has thrown its support behind MixBit, as have several prominent venture capitalists.

And with good reason: Video-sharing apps have exploded in 2013. Vine went from being on one in 50 iPhones in January to one in 10 iPhones in May. The Android version of Vine has already surpassed 5 million downloads since it launched in June. Also in June, Instagram delivered a new video feature to its 130 million active monthly users.

Hurley and Chen are hoping that MixBit's plethora of features will help the app break through the competition. As many as 256 clips can be combined into an hourlong feature, or a user can share a clip just one second long. With a simple drag-and-drop interface, users can rearrange, delete, edit and add new clips.

MixBit is designed to encourage content sharing and remixing. By allowing users to share clips and incorporate them into their own videos, it could create a whole new platform for Internet memes.

MixBit also allows for flash when recording video, and the app is incredibly simple to use. Everything from recording to editing video is simpler and more intuitive than on apps like Apple’s mobile iMovie for iOS.

VentureBeat points out one obvious flaw with MixBit: the entire app is anonymous. Without accounts or social profiles, users can’t follow each other, share videos or expand their networks, which has been crucial in the expansion of Instagram.

The MixBit app launched on the Apple iTunes store Thursday, and is available as a free download. An Android is expected to launch in a few weeks.

Early reviews of the app on iTunes have been positive. It has been called "amazing," "awesome," and, more than once, "the future of video."