On June 15, 2009, Yahoo’s video-editing platform Jumpcut will close. You might be thinking: “Who cares, anyway?” Well, Jumpcut was a differentiator in the Streaming video world. It is actually the little web-based editing functionalities that are missing in many platforms right now for non-super tech savvy people.
You might be saying again: “Yes, but there is iMovie, and Windows Movie Maker.”
True. But, instead of pushing a non-differentiation uncompetitive Yahoo! Video platform, Jumpcut could have been kept alive and better integrated or merged with Yahoo! Video, with Flickr Video or as a stand-alone tool or API compatible with the top video platforms like Youtube, Dailymotion, Blip.tv or else. It could have been what Picnik is to the photo world, a tool, an intermediate, and Yahoo had plenty of time to do that since Jumpcut was acquired in 2006.
Jumpcut could have been the real User-generated Goodness product. It brought us the Crash the Superbowl Video Contest (official web site). This contest revealed real creators (vs. YouTube’s “Wonder of the hour” ) and future directors to the world eye, which has a way deeper dimension and a much broader meaning, even if it is in the advertising world (some people will say they hate advertising anyway).
Do stats say it all? When we look at the stats, it makes sense to kill it, still it was not promoted to the extent it truly deserved. Yahoo was too busy managing, what was at the time 4 non-integreated with each other video platforms. Yes you heard it: FOUR! When you have two similar product, it is a problem; four is just an overload or an incapacity to make decisions. The official reason: “This was a difficult decision to make, but it’s part of the ongoing prioritization efforts at Yahoo! ” At last. Good enough!
For once, Google trends and Comscore data seems to align in showing a drop from 60K monthly unique visitors to 30K and less:
And Google Trends:
Jumpcut was stronger in United States and India.
Two same-topic articles you might find interesting :
Yahoo’ Entire Sorry acquisition story.
Yahoo used to be good at acquisition.
The other upcoming video editing platforms out there Jaycut.com and MovieMasher.com don’t seem to get any closer to a broad adoption. Jaycut seems to have an interesting suite of integrated video services/products and has won a RED Herring distinction.
Let’s wish them luck! And about Jumpcut? Maybe that was just me getting too emotional about a defunct product. When it is too late, it is just too late.
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