Web slide shows where you remix personal photos, music and videos are interesting, but I have often wondered if there was way to make money off them beyond the usual advertising model. Qlip Media, a Mountain View, Calif.-based start-up seems to have figured out a way, except they don’t call them slide shows, or screencasts. Instead, they call them Qlippits.
“In a face to face meeting when we want to talk about something in specific, we can point to it,” says Swamy Viswanathan, co-founder of the company. However, when discussing something on the phone or online there is no easy to do that, unless of course you are using WebEx or some kind of web-sharing service.
The 15-month-old company is backed by Norwest Venture Partners and Outlook Ventures is launching today with its product, Qlip Board, available in two versions – a free ad-supported version and an enterprise version, that costs $90 per user per annum. The company plans to launch a Pro version targeting the Web Workers and the SOHO market.
CEO Chris Beall says Qlip Media isn’t a slide show or video creation tool, but instead is primarily a communications tool. He explained that the simplicity of use and their software’s ability to create tiny multimedia files is one of the reasons why the company has been able to sign up a couple of large corporate customers.
The Qlip Board software, which currently works only on Windows Vista and Windows XP, allows you to take a document, photo, or a PDF file, and annotate it with voice or text notes, and save it as a windows media file, which can be emailed to a colleague or can be saved via QlipShare at Qlip Media’s website. You can then email the link to that file. In the free version, ads are shown at the time a Qlippit is created and viewed.
Qlip Board seems to be a handy utility, but that won’t be enough. The company will have to move at lightening speed to capture users, and grow its enterprise customer base. After all, we are living in an era of instant imitation, and it won’t be long before competitors start of offer similar functionality.
PS: If you happen to test drive their software do let me know what you think. I have not tested it since it doesn’t work on a Mac.
Possibly the best 2 word description of the reality of the web 2.0 world –“instant imitation”.
If a crash is to come it is because with a little grease work and knowlege it’s way to easy to build a new web application and too many teams are chasing the tail of the dog (not too me mistaken with the long tail).
Hopefully teams will address HARD problems again, looking outside the (current) box and me too application space to build an application that is new and usefull to a large.
Cheers.
This is good fodder for companies who are already positioned with a user back and revenues. I will borrow their ideas and incorporate it into the product I’m now building.
SlideShare launched a related service called slidecasting a few days back; it a dead simple way of mixing slides + any podcast. Its actually a mashup of slides & any mp3 url. It seems to be working well and they already seem to be having a lot of slidecasts that users are making. check this one out, currently playing on their home page
http://www.slideshare.net/comicsdude/caricaturas-89328/
Hi Om,
I did take qlipmedia for a test drive but dont have much to share. The service needs .net and that takes 10 minutes to install.
Post that the app is stable. UI is ok. Feature set is moderate. But then they are in beta. So i guess i must wait for improvements.
“PS: If you happen to test drive their software do let me know what you think. I have not tested it since it doesn’t work on a Mac.”
We’re just about 75% finished in transitioning 200+ people to Macs (plus half of our servers for now).
Stuff like this boggles my mind these days. Especially with the early adopter crowd “early adopting” macs these days. I find it actually inexcusable. Microsoft is better these days at building Mac aps than many of these start ups (silverlight). Maybe that’s an exageration.
Oh well. Pass.
Well yes, it is disappointing that they don’t have a Mac version. And I think the initial crowd that would LOVE and USE this software IS the Mac crowd — ’cause we cool like that! [smile]
But, I’m also set up with a PC in my office, so I tried it out anyway. I think it’s excellently simple . . . which I really like cause though I love hanging out with “techy” people – I’m woefully NOT techy at all. I love the simplicity of this software and I’ve already begun working on some qlippits to put up on my business site to help my clients and visitors learn how to use a Virtual Assistant effectively.
I would like to create several simple online courses using this software because it’s so easy and quick . . .I’m trying to figure out a way to make money from this endeavor. I hear the PRO version will be coming out in a while, and I’m wondering if they will allow you to put your OWN advertisements in Qlipboard PRO or something. That way you can have sponsors as part of your little Qlippits. Can you imagine how great that would be if you had a blog? Or how you can have a software company be a sponsor for your little Qlippit online course?
I’m hoping that something like this will soon become available. I think I’ll drop them a note about this. But, anyway, it’s a good little software package. And as an every day Joe (Joelette, actually), I can see many uses for this quick and easy web tool.
I came to know the existence of this software through an article in the paper.
I cam to this site out of curiosity. I will try it out. I have to send my drawings to my clients. With this added feature of being able to add vocal explanations, it would make it fantastic I suppose.
I hope I can do a good job. Like with all the new software that we use, either one takes to it and lives with it or one cannot figure it out and leaves it alone.
Lets see what my position on this will be.