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Vine's co-founders launch feature-packed streaming service named Hype

Vine's co-founders launch feature-packed streaming service named Hype

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Live-streaming video is a crowded marketplace, with products from the likes of Twitter and Facebook already killing off one early pioneer, Meerkat. But the co-founders of Vine seem undeterred by this (and the recent death of the app they sold to Twitter), and have launched Hype: a video app that turns live-streaming into show-and-tell.

Hype’s main selling point is that it has a bunch of multimedia features that go beyond the usual live-streaming experience. Audience members can interact with streams via polls, votes, and questions, and streamers can choose to highlight any comment in the live video itself. Streamers can also change how their video appears in the stream, putting it in different shaped windows or moving it around the screen. And most importantly, hosts can drop any piece of media from their device (that can be a song, a video, an image, or a GIF) straight into their live stream.

This creates all sorts of opportunities for different formats. Users could create impromptu clip shows, for example, or review games or movies, or use their live stream to comment on the latest viral video or news broadcast. Basically, there’s a lot of potential here, but it all depends if Hype finding an interested and enthusiastic community. You can download the iOS app here, and Hype's creators promise an Android version will be on the way soon.