Changing the way news is consumed on digital media - Wibbitz
With the advent of smartphones and digital media, newspapers are not a necessity anymore. And in digital media, text is not the only way to produce and consume content, audio and video content is getting popular by the day. But when it comes to news, text rules -- even in the digital format.
Zohar Dayan and Yotam Cohen are two young and innovative chaps from Israel who were addicted to news. And as smartphones started becoming increasingly popular and widespread, they saw it as a great way of stay updated on what was happening in the world. But the more they read on smartphones, the more they realized that text news simply wasn't fun on a smartphone. The constant scrolling and zooming in and out was frustrating and limited how much they were willing to read.
Necessity is the mother of invention, in their case it can be considered the mother of innovation as well. They felt video content would be much better suited to mobile devices and immediately began working on a solution that would transform text to video. Zohar and Yotam co-founded Wibbitz, in 2010 while they were students, to provide a better and efficient way to consume news.
“Using a series of algorithms, we developed a technology that would optimize already existing text content by summarizing it and turning it into a visually beautiful and information-rich video. We see Wibbitz as the play button for the internet,” Zohar and Yotam echo each other. Though they had a clear idea in mind and the capability to develop it, they were wondering how to bring it out to the market. They were fortunate enough to get a chance to work with some good investors and put together a team.
Within 3 years, Wibbitz now has a team of 17 and is backed by investors including Li Ka-Shing's Horizons Ventures (which had also invested in Facebook, Spotify and Waze), Lool Ventures, Initial Capital and Kima Ventures. It is currently available on iOS and HTML5, and an Android version is also coming soon. With millions of videos watched on Wibbitz, they have customers from across the globe using their free app. Here is a quick video showing how Wibbitz works:
The co-founders believe that Wibbitz’s USP lies in its ability to offer a way to optimize the text content which is already out there so that it’s both more enjoyable and easier for consumers, and more effectively monetized for businesses. While other news readers essentially offer the long-form text of a newspaper transferred to a small screen, they turn those articles into rich, interactive videos. These videos can be watched in 60-120 seconds, thereby optimizing them for the mobile platform.
Speaking of the startup eco-system in Israel, they say that it is amazing, largely because of the support and collaboration within the community. Specifically in the mobile space, the sale of Waze has had a major impact in Israel and their success is a proof-of-concept for what an Israeli mobile startup can achieve.
Showing early signs of a good entrepreneur in a collaborative and supportive startup environment, both Zohar and Yotam think simple and clear. They believe that entrepreneurship isn’t just about business, it’s about looking at the world in terms of opportunities that have yet to present themselves, and positioning yourself to be in that space. “It’s about recognizing the gaps when they appear in your daily experience – what would make your life easier, or better? – and then working to find a solution. Most importantly, it’s about believing in yourself and having the confidence to make your vision a reality,” say the duo.
What started out of Zohar’s and Yotam’s experience with the problem of ‘too long so didn’t read’ is providing a solution on a potentially global scale today. Their journey is of a simple idea executed well to make things easier for the world. Wibbitz is a leader in text-to-video technology and they plan to continue pushing the limits of this technology to create amazing products.
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