Yahoo and Beme take on Snapchat with video sharing apps
There's no shortage of apps that can take short video clips you can blast to friends. But if you're willing to branch out and try new things, Yahoo and YouTube celebrity Casey Neistat have released alternatives with different takes on video sharing. Neistat's iPhone app called Beme, for instance, starts recording four-second videos when you cover the sensor above the device's earpiece. In his demo below the fold, he shows how you can cover the sensor by placing the phone against your chest. The idea is that you get to experience life and see events with your own eyes instead of through a screen, even while recording what's in front of you.
The video clip you upload will stay long enough for friends to be able to send you reaction selfies, after which, it vanishes completely. Neistat told The New York Times that his team designed the app to be as simple as possible (it doesn't have a lot of features), because they "want you to feel like you're taking a peek under the hood." Yahoo's new messaging app called Livetext, however, is a bit more conventional than Beme, though it still works quite differently than similar programs.
On Livetext, conversation begins when you send a text message to a friend. The moment that friend opens your message, you'd immediately see him/her and whatever's in view of the camera in a silent, GIF-like video. The company has been working on a revamp of its messaging app for quite some time, but it's unclear if this is the product of those efforts. TechCrunch has merely spotted Livetext on iTunes Hong Kong -- it's been there for a week now, released with no fanfare or even a formal announcement.
