Amazon has taken a special interest in one of its web service customers: Animoto, the machine-driven music video creator that launched last August and now has over 160,000 users. The online retail giant has decided to fund the startup with an undisclosed amount of money.
Animoto takes photo and music files from users and essentially turns them into souped up slideshows with background music that synchronizes with effects and transitions. The service uses Amazon’s SQS, S3 and EC2 to store the requisite files and process the videos.
Cloud computing has been so vital to Animoto’s operations that Jeff Bezos even used the company as example of how well EC2 helps web apps scale when their traffic hockey sticks (in Animoto’s case, when its Facebook app took off last month).
To celebrate Animoto’s new influx of money, I’ve compiled the following video with background music by Pink Floyd. My only quibbles when putting it together include the inability to use PNG files or search for photos on Flickr by tag.