NEW YORK, NY--(Marketwired - Jan 25, 2016) - Wibbitz, the leading automated text-to-video company, has announced two new video production offerings that will empower its publishing partners to invest more strategically in social and mobile video. The team has made substantial updates to the Wibbitz Control Room platform, including a new video format designed specifically for social media and an enhanced Editor. The Social Media Format tool enables publishers to instantly adapt videos to be compatible with social platforms like Facebook, Instagram and Twitter. The upgrades to the Editor facilitate more customization and flexibility in automated video production. These two announcements are first in a strong pipeline of new products that will be rolling out throughout the first half of 2016.
Wibbitz works with publishers to support their video strategies and scale production so that they can compete in a 24-hour news cycle that is relying more and more on video. Social media has become a necessity for any publisher looking to expand its distribution strategy and reach its audience across devices. Social platforms like Facebook and Twitter, as well as mobile-first players like Instagram and Snapchat, are growing increasingly visual and video-based.
Wibbitz's Social Media Format tool is a direct response to this trend, allowing publishers to showcase their existing text content as a social-friendly video that ensures the right structure, design and format -- automatically. Wibbitz is developing three key features to help publishers meet this need:
- Text overlays to replace narration: Autoplay is the dominant setting for video on social platforms, but users don't always make the effort to click through for sound. Wibbitz has therefore built additional text overlay options to convey a video's story, allowing viewers to engage with content even without sound or narration.
- Condensed highlights for shorter videos: In order to best serve and hold the attention of viewers on-the-go, 'highlights' are identified within a story to create a video that's condensed to just 30 seconds, versus Wibbitz's web-optimized videos of about 45-60 seconds.
- Platform-adaptive design: The new format will include the option for square videos to better fit within mobile screens and social platforms. The shape and size of videos can heavily impact their performance, and square formats have been proven to drive greater engagement on mobile. Publishers can leverage the same video content for different orientations with minimal editing.
"Being omnipresent in today's publishing industry is a mandate, not a choice. Having a thorough social media strategy requires far more legwork for publishers than it did a couple of years ago," says Yotam Cohen, co-founder and COO of Wibbitz. "With our new solutions, publishers can turn a text article into a social video optimized for any popular platform within seconds, taking the guesswork out of video production and keeping up with the consumer appetite for digestible, social video."
In addition to the new Social Media Format, Wibbitz is also eager to announce its new Editor, a major update to Wibbitz's powerful Control Room platform. The advanced Editor amplifies the customization capabilities of the existing Wibbitz Control Room, making the editing process easier, more intuitive, and more flexible for publishers. While the Social Media Format tool lets publishers instantly capitalize on the boom of social video growth, the new Editor tools give publishers more control over their content and opportunities for personalization and creativity.
The Editor has over 12 new updates including muted voiceovers, multiple new text overlay styles, and customized themes, as well as the ability to upload specific soundtracks, better sync the video narration and media when making edits, and send a message to voiceover artists to request specific tones or accents.
Wibbitz entered the U.S. market in 2015 and rapidly began adding U.S. partners. Last year, the company secured $8M in Series B funding, relocated its US headquarters to New York City's Financial District, and expanded its U.S footprint partnering with publishers such as USA TODAY Sports, Hearst, and ViralNova. To continue this growth in 2016 and help build its new set of product offerings, Wibbitz has hired 20 additional employees across its New York and Tel Aviv offices, including ten new engineers.
About Wibbitz
Wibbitz provides a text-to-video technology that allows publishers to repackage text articles into digestible, rich and informative video summaries within seconds. Its text-to-video technology and Control Room video creation platform support simple and scalable video production for thousands of videos each day. Wibbitz hosts offices in both NYC and Tel Aviv. For more information, visit www.wibbitz.com or follow via Twitter @Wibbitz.
