Eight years and a billion monthly visitors later, YouTube cofounders Steve Chen and Chad Hurley are at it again with the new social video app MixBit. As of last week, the app is available for free for Android and iPhone users.

First released for iOS in early August, MixBit is a video app that allows users to record clips up to 16 seconds in length and stich them into longer videos.  Videos can be as long as 256 clips in length — nearly an hour of footage in total. Users are encouraged to remix clips uploaded by MixBit account holders into their own original creations.

To record with MixBit, users open the app, enter video mode and press down on the screen for as long as they want to record. The editing process is stripped down and easy to use, giving account holders the ability to trim, duplicate, delete or share clips, as well as the option to import pictures or video from elsewhere.

As with similar apps including Vine and Instagram, videos are both published on the site and shared via separate social media sites. Users have the option of signing up with existing Twitter, Facebook, Google+ or Tumblr accounts.

Unlike YouTube, there is not an emphasis on creating a community within the site itself.  Users do not even need to be signed up with a MixBit account to upload their videos. Instead, the focus is on content alone. Videos are displayed with very little metadata beyond the view count, the country of origin and the date the clip was uploaded.

MixBit creations run the gamut from the mundane to the bizarre. Sometimes the videos composed of bite-sized clips work effectively for storytelling — there is one video that narrates the story of two kids getting a new puppy. But in other cases, the effect of the short clips is disconcerting and confusing.

At any rate, the medium is still evolving. As more content goes up on the site, the collaborative angle of the app will likely become a bigger focus.

In a blog post about MixBit’s release in August, cofounder Chad Hurley said that YouTube had been about helping people “share their videos with each other and the world.”  With MixBit, Hurley and Chen have a new goal: “to remove the barriers to video creation.”  Hurley claimed the app is for everyone ranging from journalists to filmmakers to — because it is meant for the Internet — “people who like cat videos.”

Published on October 6, 2013 at 9:10 pm

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