This New App Lets Users Legally Share Buzzy TV Clips 'The days of awkwardly holding your phone up to the TV to record and share your favorite moments may be coming to an end,' says Whipclip's founder.
By Geoff Weiss
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Launching alongside Comedy Central's roast of Justin Bieber tonight, a new app called Whipclip is aiming to simplify -- and legalize -- the social shareability of buzzy TV moments.
With the free app, which is available for iOS and coming soon to Android, users can rewind up to three minutes during shows as they air in order to cut and share their favorite clips in real-time. Whipclip also enables users to create 30-second clips from an archive of shows that have already aired by searching for keywords via closed captioning.
These moments can then be shared via Facebook, Pinterest, Tumblr, Twitter, email and SMS. Users can also follow their friends and celebrities within the Whipclip app, which acts as its own social network of sorts.
In a major coup, Whipclip boasts partnerships with an array of leading television networks, including ABC, CBS, FOX, Comedy Central, VH1, A&E and Lifetime, Bloomberg, truTV and OWN. Additionally, Whipclip has teamed up with Universal Music Group and Sony Music so that users can mine 10,000 music video clips from artists like Justin Bieber and Taylor Swift, the company said.
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"The days of awkwardly holding your phone up to the TV to record and share your favorite moments may be coming to an end," said Whipclip's chairman and CEO, Richard Rosenblatt, in a statement.
Rosenblatt, who previously founded online content company Demand Media and resigned as CEO in 2013, said that the app seeks to fill a glaring void given that 70 percent of television viewers are simultaneously online with a second screen. It's also a win-win for the networks. "Consumers want to share great content without jumping through hoops. Media owners are looking for increased social media exposure."
Founded in 2014 by Rosenblatt and the entrepreneur Ori Birnbaum, Whipclip raised $20 million in its Series B last December, which included investments from media bigwigs like Ari Emanuel, Peter Guber, Steve Bornstein and Scooter Braun.
The company is based in Santa Monica, Calif. and Tel Aviv, Israel.
