I’ve admitted it before: I have a crush on Animoto. The service does one thing really, really well. It turns photos into slideshows, with music, instantly.
The site has done extremely well. As competitors like Slide and RockYou have wandered off to create countless useless Facebook applications, Animoto has stuck to creating really cool photo slideshows. As of August, Animoto had 250,000 users in 200 countries and 4 million or so videos have been viewed 50 million times.
The basic service is free and users can create videos up to 30 seconds long (that lets Animoto sidestep copyright mess on the songs). If you pay $30 a year or $3/video the time restriction is removed. Videos can be watched on the site, embedded on other sites, or downloaded in MP4 format for free. Users can also have a DVD printed and sent to them for $20, or download a high res (864×480) version in MP4 or ISO format for $5. Today they are also releasing a customized link that lets users easily view videos on their iPhone.
And now users can add text to videos. Not captions or subtitles, but really slick movie-like text. The video below demonstrates it:
To date they’ve taken two rounds of financing, including an undisclosed amount from Amazon in May 2008.
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