Animoto Brings Photos Alive On The iPhone

I may have to start an iPhone blog soon. I’m now  up to four screens worth of apps ranging from IM aggregators like Fring to novelty services like Ocarina and UrbanSpoon. 

Animoto is one app I installed this morning and in minutes I was compiling a slideshow of iPhone pics with a matching soundtrack to boot.

After signing up on the Animoto website, you can upload content and quickly edit your slideshow. I created one movie using their web-based app and another on the iPhone version of the app. What I can’t figure out is why my accounts aren’t synced. The one I created on Animoto’s website doesn’t appear on the iPhone-based app. I followed Animoto on Twitter so I expect I’ll hear something soon.

A  few other nice touches include the ability to preview soundtracks and an email notification that your masterpiece is ready. It took me 3 or 4 minutes to produce the video below.

You can also see how the Fremium model (below) comes into play as users become more sophisticated and develop a need (addiction) for additional bandwidth and formats.  It should be interesting to see Animoto’s business model evolve as additional social services become easily connected allowing Animoto users to share and connect regardless of device or platform. The “Video from Friends” option should use OpenID or Facebook Connect to let me populate my widget on Facebook or LinkedIn instead of having to perform a one-off embed each time.

All in all, Animoto pulls the experience together quite nicely.