Pinterest has been blowing up all over the Internet. Pinterest is focused on images, although you can pin videos too. Chill however is a video-only pinboard site, which is its differentiation.
Based in Los Angeles, the site launched in its current iteration one month ago. It has received more than 500,000 unique visitors in the first month. Every day, users share 4,000 videos on the site. But should Chill really be called “the Pinterest of video”?
“It’s not an unfair comparison given we both utilize the masonry user interface and emphasize the sharing of interesting content,” says Founder Brian Norgard. It’s true: A picture (on Pinterest) may be worth 1,000 words. But in a video, you’ll be able to hear and understand all 1,000 words.
“As we see it, video has many tributaries: short form, television, motion pictures, UGC, etc.,” says Norgard. “In order to build world class experiences for customers, video needs a dedicated platform.”
Using Chill is quite simple. Login with Facebook, find a video that you enjoy and repost it to your account. Then choose a type of smiley face emoticon that expresses how you feel about the video. You can also leave a comment, and see who else viewed the video. Lastly, share the video out to Facebook or Twitter.
Doesn’t video already have a home on the Web? Yes, it does. In fact, it has two: YouTube and Vimeo. Both of those sites are great for hosting videos. But when it comes to fast user-to-user sharing, those are not the places to be.
And what about Facebook? As of December 2011, Facebook was one of the top destinations for online video watching after Google Sites, VEVO, Yahoo! Sites and Viacom Digital. This particular report took into account the total unique viewers and number of videos, but it did not look at the number of videos shared.
Last week, Tim and Eric’s Billion Dollar Movie debuted on Facebook a full two weeks before hitting theaters. Fans paid $10 to watch it on the social network, which is cheaper than in some cinemas.
All that said, Norgard is not concerned about competing with Facebook. In fact, he sees Chill as complimenting it. After users sign into Chill with Facebook Connect, Chill has access to the open graph, which helps the site deliver relevant videos to the user.
“Video needs a dedicated platform,” says Norgard. “From video search to collections, there’s so many aspects of the video experience that Facebook isn’t focusing on today because of its massive scale.”
Chill is only one month in, but things are looking good. It has curated a few popular video collections, including The Ultimate Steve Jobs Collection and The Shit People Say Definitive Collection.
So sorry, Ryan Gosling: It looks like you’ll have to hang out on Pinterest. Shit X Says to Y meme, we’ll see you on Chill.
Image courtesy of Shutterstock.
