Heard of Flipagram yet? Watch out, it's the next big flipping thing
Hands up if you're on Flipagram?
Flip a what?
It's tipped to be bigger than Instagram and this week broke new ground by increasing the time limit of its flips from 30 seconds to 60.
According to Kathleen Chaykowski writing in Forbes, by the end of 2014 Flipagram had 30 million users per month.
Facebook took least three years to get that far. Snapchat took two years.
Flipagram did it in one.
Kathleen notes Flipagram’s big insight was that people wanted a way to make videos faster than they could on YouTube and with more creative freedom and depth than Twitter’s Vine or Facebook’s Instagram.
Flipagram’s big difference is that it lets people add 30-second snippets of music (up to 60 seconds as of this week) to their videos from a searchable catalogue of tens of millions of songs.
You need to watch a few videos to really get it.
This one is particularly cute.
Before long all the cool influencers types off of YouTube will be on there.
Vine artists have already made the leap. So has Britney Spears and Garth Brooks (N.B. not Garth Crooks, although I'd like him to be).
Being able to clip proper music without infringing copyright, or having to use some unlicensed dross makes a massive difference.
Talking to Techcrunch, Flipagram's founder says you should think of their community as leaders. People who are on the cutting edge.
"50 per cent + are millennials and Gen Zs memorializing the stories of their lives. The other 40% are all sorts of other users, savvy adults and kids."
Techcrunch makes the point that Flipagram has every hallmark of an Instagram or Twitter.
It is successfully attracting creative talents who love to share, brands who want to get in front of important eyeballs and celebrities who want to keep in touch with their fans.
It adds: 'Since Flipagram has a focus on music, musicians can think of Flipagram as a stream of commercials for their music with fan photos and videos attached. There’s a storytelling component that’s missing from other services, too. It’s quite genius.'
I agree.
Just when you think the social media world has already been gobbled up by Facebook (Instagram, WhatsApp), Google (YouTube) and Twitter (Vine) along comes Snapchat, and now Flipagram to keep them on their toes.
My faith in humanity is restored, and for now at least the big social giants don't have it all their own flipping way.
Follow Dom on Twitter @domburch