Vodio, the social video viewing app for iPad which competes with ShowYou, Shelby.tv, and others, is out with a major update this morning, which brings a number of new features, including a history section, “Watch Later” functionality, a dedicated channel for viewing mobile app videos and even App Store integration that allows you to purchase the apps from the videos you watch.
The company also issued a progress report on its adoption since the iPad app’s January launch. Over 200,000 users have downloaded Vodio to date, and have viewed over 100,000 hours of video across 4 million videos.
For a refresher, Vodio has a slightly different take on the social video viewing experience than some of the competition. Where others offer a selection of video content based solely on what your friends on social networks are watching, Vodio instead uses that to bring “a dash” of personalization to its video recommendations. What that means is that in Vodio, you’ll get insight into what the crowd thinks is popular, too, not just your group of friends.
Case in point: the company says that the most shared video was the infamous KONY 2012, but that one has the same number of views as two others: The iPad 3 Concept and Invisible Mercedes.
The most watched channels currently include Buzz, Sports, Tech and Entertainment. Those also happen to be all the app’s default channels, which makes me wonder if enough of the users are exploring the channel customization options.
In the new version rolling out today (ver. 1.5), Vodio is offering App Store integration (powered by AppsFire), meaning that while watching videos within the various app channels, viewers can also choose to download the apps related to the videos they’re watching directly from the App Store.
This feature goes hand-in-hand with a new channel addition which showcases videos of mobile apps, including app demo videos, app reviews, app trailers, gameplay and more. The channel is named “iPad Apps,” but it contains iPhone app videos in here, too, it should be noted. Â It’s also highly addictive, so fair warning. (I just downloaded a bunch of stuff, ack!)
Other new features include a “Watch Later” bookmarking option, an “Activity” view that maintains a history of your watched videos, an integrated feedback system for submitting bugs, comments and feature requests, and a “co-browsing” feature that lets you get more information about other videos while you’re watching a video play.
That latter option is great for those with short attention spans (like myself). Using the sidebar that pops out on the right, you can tap the “i” icon to get info about other recommended videos, tap the “+” to queue them for later, or tap the “play” button to switch over to the new video immediately, all while the current video still plays.
Apparently, I’m not the only one who likes to cut my video-viewing short. Vodio tells us that only 18% of users watch video to the end.
The updated app is available here in iTunes.