Wibbitz, a startup that helps online publishers create video summaries of their articles, is announcing its first big push in the U.S. market, starting with partnerships with USA Today Sports, Hearst and ViralNova.
Wibbitz analyzes the text of a story, creating a summary that’s turned into a voiceover (you can go with a real human or a computer voiceover) accompanied by photos, graphics and other content from the publisher or from Wibbitz partners. You can see a sample video below.
Co-founder and CEO Zohar Dayan said this isn’t supposed to replace videos created by your editorial team, but to supplement them — after all, for most publishers, the vast majority of articles don’t have an accompanying video. Wibbitz makes it easy to change that.
“I don’t think longform text articles are going away,” Dayan added. “I just think publishers do need to adapt to the way readers want to get the news, whether it’s a short snippet, or if they have the time or the attention span to dive deeper into the article. A healthy combination of both is a good strategy.”
Wibbitz says it already works with 70 international publishers. Even with just a few publishers announced in the U.S., the company’s videos should appear on more than 35 sites, including Esquire, SFGate and USA Today’s digital sports properties.
And while Wibbitz still has an office and a team of 25 in Tel Aviv, Israel, it has also opened an office in New York City. Dayan said the new office has become the company’s “business headquarters,” and he’s now based in NYC himself.