Mela, a new application launching this week at TechCrunch Disrupt NY’s Startup Alley, lets you create collaborative videos with friends and other Mela users. Like other video-sharing applications, you can record and share your short videos in the app, then add a hashtag. But what makes Mela unique is that when other users upload videos under the same hashtag, those videos are stitched together to become a longer, seamless video that any other Mela users can then view.
Based in Ramat Gan, Israel, Mela was co-founded last year by Sharon Sheinberg and serial entrepreneur Meir Ben-Shitrit.
Meir originally came up with the idea for the app after looking at a photo album from a recent trip, which he thought didn’t really capture what he felt in the moment those photos were taken. He believes that a moving picture is a more effective way of capturing emotions. And after teaming up with Sheinberg, they decided to create Mela as a collaborative experience.
To use the app, Mela users first shoots a 15-second video, then selects 2.5 seconds from that video that best capture the essence of the moment. They then tag the video with a few hashtags.
As more users add their own videos to Mela, all the videos under the same hashtag will play as one, longer video stream. This feature makes Mela different from other video-sharing apps, which are largely about sharing your own videos with a network of friends.
“Instead of just giving people a look into your life, you get a chance to look into the lives of people sharing similar content,” says Sheinberg.
Mela is a free download here on iTunes.