We’re celebrating Hanukah in Israel right now and given all the fun and festivities going on, we thought it would be a good time to look back over the past few months and highlight some of the tech trends we’re seeing in startup land in the Startup Nation. As a caveat, these trends are based upon our deal flow – what we’re seeing on the ground. So, Happy Hanukah and enjoy.

The Problem: The internet has made us into creators, and has let the world express themselves in ways that people could never even dream about years ago. While it is easy to share pictures and text, it is significantly harder to create, publish, and share video content through social media and the internet as a whole.

The Solutions: 

  • Vtago– Vtago has revolutionized the way people share videos with their friends by allowing the user to tag friends by using faces extracted from the video itself and connecting them with the user’s friends. In addition, each friend will get a personalized video showing only the parts of the video in which he can see himself, therefore giving every user his own personal experience.
  • Wibbitz– Wibbitz can turn any text from any article, post, or feed on the web and turn it into a short and easy to understand video clip. These video include an original voice over narration, great visual representation of the text, and can be watched on any device.
  • Stevie– Stevie turns your personal social feeds (like Facebook and Twitter) into your own broadcast television experience. When your hands are busy with something else but you still want to be entertained, you can now watch videos, status updates, events, photos, birthdays and more on your computer screen.
  • Vidit– Vidit collects videos taken by many people in a single event, and using a unique video synchronization algorithm, synchronizes and edits them into one video that depicts the event from its beginning to its end, from the user’s point of view.
  • Sparkeo– Sparkeo is an online marketplace for educational videos. Sparkeo’s platform enables people to come on to the site, upload a video teaching people to do something, and then sell the content for a predetermined price. It is free for the up-loader, provides an easy upload solution for already existing videos, and is a very good way to make quick cash.

The Future: Social media is as strong as ever. Facebook has over 1 billion users; Twitter has several hundred million as well. And those are just the top two sites. Creating and sharing video will be a key part in the social media world for many years to come.

[bra_team_member member_name=”Elan Yudkowsky” member_position=”Intern at OurCrowd” member_img_src=”https://blog.ourcrowd.net/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/elan.jpg” member_social_list=”LinkedIn, http://www.linkedin.com/pub/elan-yudkowsky/5a/689/649″ member_columns=”2″]Elan Yudkowsky is an intern at OurCrowd. He will be attending the University of Maryland in the Spring.[/bra_team_member]