Hype, a newly released live video and multimedia app, launched a few days ago with some rather convenient timing. Just as we’re coming to terms with Twitter’s recent announcement about the loss of Vine, the creators of the now deceased social channel that gave us some of the most hilarious, short videos announced a new project for us to explore.
With this perfectly timed announcement, Hype hit the iTunes App store and the Internet is buzzing about what could be a new social media obsession.
“While developing HYPE, we were inspired by the evolution of TV and desktop broadcasting?—?these areas continue to grow in quality and expression, while mobile video has remained relatively simple and one-dimensional,” the Hype creators wrote in their announcement last week. “We think there’s a better experience to be had, one that uses the phone’s capabilities to full effect and blends the creator’s own media into their live broadcast.”
The live-streaming iOS app is available for download and users should prepare for a lot of creative freedom—and a whole lot of weirdness. The app allows you to create videos (one that is longer than six seconds) and layer multimedia onto it. For example, you can add gifs, filters, music, photos, emojis, text, and more to make your videos crazy and exciting. It seems you can pretty much do whatever you want on the platform to make your videos your own.
Since it’s a live streaming app, one of the unique features the app provides is allowing video creators to interact with views in real time. Creators can see comments or feedback from viewers as the video live streams, which gives them the opportunity to interact with each other in the moment.
It sounds weird and, well, it is pretty strange at first use. Hype essentially combines YouTube, Snapchat and Vine with a lot of glitter mixed in that you can sprinkle on your videos (seriously).
Similar how Snapchat operates, there’s no tutorial for getting started in Hype. But, since there’s so much going on, the best course of action is to just play around with it and figure out what you can do and how you want to use it. My best guess is we’ll start seeing Hype stars with their own, weird channels blowing up in no time.
The creators are hoping this will fill the void that Vine is leaving behind on the Internet. Though it’s too soon to tell whether the replacement will be enough, the creators appear to have high hopes that this app will develop a strong following and support the way Vine did. Hopefully this time they’ll be able to stick around longer, and maybe make some money.