Above: Kanvas 3.0 on iPhone
In a bid to differentiate itself from the slew of media sharing apps out there, Kanvas is focusing on something a bit different: stop-motion videos.
With Kanvas 3.0, launching today on the iPhone, the company has upgraded its media sharing tool to let its users easily transform video clips, photos, overlays, and even animated GIFs into unique stop-motion videos.
The goal, according to Kanvas CEO Vic Singh, is to let the app’s predominantly young audience be even more creative. 72 percent of Kanvas users are under 24, and 40 percent are under 18.
Videos created in Kanvas don’t look like the things you’d normally see on Instagram or Vine. They’re a mashup of text, video, stickers, and music. It makes for more manic content than other social networks, but it also allows for users to inject more of their personality.
“These kids are so positive it's ridiculous,” Singh said, referring to its young “Generation Z” audience. The company has noticed that most of the content created by Kanvas users is surprisingly supportive and expressive, with only 0.5 percent of content being reported as inappropriate.
The new stop-motion video capability adds yet another layer of potential creativity. Kanvas users can now shoot a slew of short video clips, as well as easily move them around, to create the stop-motion effect. (You can do similar things on Vine and Instagram, though it requires a bit more work on those platforms.)
Kanvas’s big update follows its rebranding from Tracks in February, Singh’s previous life-charting social network. So far the New York City-based company has raised around $3.4 million, including funding from its previous incarnation.
Tracks is building the experience graph. The Tracks mobile and web service lets users effortlessly make micro-social networks around real world experiences. 'Tracks' can be geo, temporal or last forever. Make tracks for a family c... read more »
