“One love, one heart, let’s get together and feel all right,” – Bob Marley
When a Miami startup wanted to test and demonstrate the global power of its new consumer video social platform, Videoo.com thought what better way than with the passionate fans of the late Bob Marley. Through a partnership between the Marley family and Videoo.com that launched during Bob Marley Week in early February, fans created the first crowd-sourced video compilation to forever honor the musical legend, said CEO Barry Stamos, who founded the company with Chief Product Officer Heidi Finn Roberts, Chief Content Officer Jorge Moreno, a Latin Grammy winner, and COO Joshua Stedman.
More than 100 Bob Marley fans or groups of fans from more than 62 countries – including Australia, Argentina, the U.K., Thailand, Saudi Arabia and Ukraine – created the first socially sourced video about how Bob Marley impacted their lives, said Finn Roberts. Fans, musicians, artists and celebrities came together by recording or uploading short videos to http://www.videoo.com/h/BobMarleyWeek. Videoo’s proprietary technology automatically compiled the clips into one single social video compilation for #BobMarleyWeek, Finn Roberts said. Watch it here.
"It's really beautiful how it came together," said Stamos, who founded companies as well as held management positions for tech firms. "Bob Marley's vision of one world, one love is a dream that inspired many, including us at Videoo, which is why our team is so excited this is the first-use case with our technology. It demonstrated how fast and easy the world can unite in mass collaboration to do something extraordinary."
People from more than 177 countries watched these videos on Videoo.com. And on the Bob Marley official Facebook page, more than 29,000 have already liked and 3,900 people have shared a Videoo highlight compilation (below) showcasing the #BobMarley Videoo. The highlight video has already attracted 16,000 views.
Videoo users can contribute up to 22-second clips through the app. Also anyone can go onto videoo.com and upload a video and hashtag it. “The whole idea is to make it radically inclusive whether or not you have a smartphone. Anyone with a web connection can upload,” said Stamos. However, there are limitations on the size of the files the system can handle, and not everyone who has wanted to contribute to the Marley video has been able to. “We’ll get past that in weeks, not months, we are working on that now,” Stamos said.
Plans are to have robust private label versions of Videoo available for brands, but the app will always be for consumers and will always be free, said Stamos: “We really believe that society should have control over the editorial of our time.” The idea is that the app could be used by families, friends, organizations and causes for compilations as simple as documenting a family event or high school reunion to prayers for recovery of a loved one to a global tribute.
Fans can still add to the Bob Marley Videoo. There is also one started called #BringBaeBack, calling for the release of Korean American Kenneth Bae held in North Korea. That was kicked off by Alexis Ohanian, co-founder of reddit, who was in town for Refresh Miami last month. The co-founders said Ohanian was one of their inspirations as reddit always was and is about innovating crowdsourcing, aggregation and crowd curation.