Yahoo idles Jumpcut, steers video users to Flickr
Jumpcut let people upload, combine, and share videos. Now it's in maintenance mode.
(Credit: Yahoo)Yahoo's belt-tightening has led the company to shut down new uploads to its Jumpcut service for sharing and combining videos, steering people instead to its Flickr service.
"We're sorry to announce that we are no longer accepting uploads to Jumpcut," a note on the site said Wednesday. "It was a difficult decision that we wish we didn't have to make, but it was necessary in order to focus resources on other Yahoo sites."
Jumpcut now steers users to Yahoo's photo-sharing site Flickr, which got video abilities earlier this year. Jumpcut won't be shut down, and existing videos won't be deleted, but without the ability to upload new videos, it's clear the site doesn't have a shining future before it.
Yahoo acquired Jumpcut in 2006, but the service never made it out of beta testing.
Yahoo laid off 1,520 employees last week and is in the midst of a review of all its business units to see which should be preserved. The company is under fierce financial pressure that only got worse with the recession and increasingly gloomy forecasts for online advertising.
Jumpcut let people upload and share videos, but also combine them into larger works. This option is still available for existing videos, but people's remixed videos can't be downloaded.
"Jumpcut was built to assemble your movies in real-time so you wouldn't have to wait for rendering. The flip-side of this design means there's no single 'file to download,'" the site said. "There are third-party tools like http://www.clipnabber.com that you can use to get a partial download of your Jumpcut movies in .flv format, but the files created won't include any titles, transitions or effects that you added using the Jumpcut editor."
For video editing, the site steered people away from the cloud toward PC-based applications: Windows Movie Maker and Apple's iMovie.
(Via TechCrunch.)
Stephen Shankland writes about a wide range of technology and products, but has a particular focus on browsers and digital photography. He joined CNET News in 1998 and since then also has covered Google, Yahoo, servers, supercomputing, Linux and open-source software, and science. E-mail Stephen, or follow him on Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/stshank. 
They had a great email app just developed that allowed you to send up to 300 photos at a time in email which was very amazing & easy to use...It got dumped because it was getting rid of the photo library...
Jumpcut was a great idea that worked...How many sites do you see where you can edit & post videos...
It just wasn't a finished product Again...It was too slow to upload but once there it worked fairly well.. But the concept was there...The developers are doing the job & coming up with the right ideas but management is failing them...You build it...They will come...Make it easy...make it fun...It will make you money on the social network...Yahoo only needs Vision...The tools are there...
- by terenceswee December 18, 2008 2:25 AM PST
- Online user generated video is definitely a very challenging area to monetize. Most UGC that matters to you (home movies, personal memories) are just plain boring to others. (which also means limited eyeballs, no ad-revenue) Many of the ones that attract eyeballs are probably too risque for most advertisers.
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(5 Comments)Besides, home movies need editing to be even halfway watchable, but who has time for that?
We at muvee have been attacking this problem for over 8 years. We started www.shwup.com recently to allow users unlimited uploads of video and photos, collaborative remixing and keeping access absolutely personal. Only you and your invited guests can view and upload to the album. Invitees need not register to view, contribute or remix. We fund this by selling our PC sofware, which we develop and ship over 50MM copies of globally. It seems to be working. Wish us well! (and I hope you try it out!)
(Disclaimer: I am founder and CEO of muvee. I hope this does not count as advertisement, if it does, I apologize.)