Israeli startup WIBBITZ launches a Text-To-Video News App for iOS
Wibbitz, a text-to-video technology startup based out of Tel Aviv, Israel have launched their first iOS mobile application which converts articles originally drafted in text-form into interactive video clips that merge images, video clips, info-graphics and text-to-speech, into a beautifully packaged and convenient form for consumption on-the-go for end users. The app allows users to consume stories from their favorite news, sports, business and entertainment sites in the form of summarized video clips designed and optimized for their mobile devices. The Wibbitz app leverages technology built for media outlets for their premium media content demand, allowing them to easily convert their existing text-based content into video content at scale automatically, without human intervention.
Founded in 2011 by Zohar Dayan and Yotam Cohen, Wibbitz has raised $2.3 million from investors including Li Ka-Shing's Horizons Ventures (investors in Facebook, Spotify and Waze), Lool Ventures, Initial Capital and Kima Ventures to build their core technologies and business solution. Prior to launching the new app, Wibbitz offered content-to-video solutions for publishers, enjoying over 50,000 sites with over 17 million unique video views per month.
The primary drive behind Wibbitz team is to reinvent things – they intend to reinvent the way people consume content over the world. We have been consuming content the same way for the past 300 years (reading text) and with Wibbitz technology we’ll soon be able to hit play and watch any content brought to life automatically.
The algorithms that drive Wibbitz's technology analyze the text of an article, extract the highlights and translate them into video summaries. By utilizing industry advanced Natural Language Processing (NLP) technologies, and narrowing down texts into 1-2 minute videos, the Wibbitz app enables users to more effectively engage with media content on-the-go, as well as at home or work.
Speaking on the launch, Wibbitz CEO and Co-Founder Zohar Dayan said - "Textual web content simply isn’t designed for consumption on mobile devices. There’s just too much tapping and zooming in and out to comfortably enjoy reading the news. By automatically converting articles to videos specifically optimized for mobile devices, the Wibbitz app makes it easy and fun to finally enjoy the content again, rather than fiddle with it to make it fit to the screen "
"The internet is about enabling personalization of content and avoiding one-size-fits-all consumption," said Yotam Cohen, Co-Founder and VP of Business Development. "Wibbitz is putting the “mass” back into mass media, providing our partners a wider reach and users a greater access to information they want and need. We are targeting English speaking countries first like - US, UK, India, Australia and other to start with and plan to add more languages in the near future. Currently we have launched our app only on iOS but plan to release Android version as well and in the future along with apps for tablets and connected TVs apps.”
Download the Wibbitz app for iOS here to experience it first hand.