Introducing Whipclip, Your New Favorite 2nd Screen App

Originally published at 2nd Screen Society on March 26, 2015

While the industry may still be salivating over livestreaming in general and Meerkat in particular, a new app called Whipclip may well steal the thunder away from them. Designed to allow users to (legally) share high definition clips from current TV shows, WhipClip is going to be a force to be reckoned with.

The legal part is huge: Whipclip is partnering with a host of major TV networks, including ABC, CBS, Comedy Central, FOX, VH1, A+E Network, Lifetime, Bloomberg, OWN and Turner in order to launch the first legitimate TV clipping service.

It’s huge because not only are those networks making their programs available to Whipclippers, they’re actively working with the app to make previously aired shows searchable.

And therein lies the magic of Whipclip: Not only can you go in and find and edit a clip from a show you are currently watching, you can go in and search for a particular term or phrase or name from a sizable back catalog.

That means a user can go to the Bob’s Burgers page and search for “Tina” and turn up every scene featuring that character. Or they can get more specific and search for “Tina smells like ketchup” to turn up that particular scene.

The app serves up a one-minute clip, which the user can then edit down to 30 seconds using a very intuitive clipping tool. Searches can also be for real people, so that an actor’s manager can easily call up episodes of Late Night, Oprah and other shows the actor has appeared on and send them out to fans and/or interested production companies.

That’s pretty revolutionary, as Whipclips can be shared across a range of social networks: Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr and Pinterest (to start) as well as via email and text message, easily spreading the word to millions of fans.

The implications of all that sharing from a data perspective are tremendous: networks will be able to keep track of fans’ favorite moments in a show and understand which segments resonated with which demographic and on which platform.

In addition, they’ll be able to use Whipclip as a promotional vehicle, sending out the clips they want fans to share in the hopes of turning a popular moment into a meme.

Whipclip also works as a discovery tool, ranking the most shared moments so that users can easily see what everyone else is sharing. This feature then provides valuable data to the networks, who can use it to predict how well new shows are resonating with fans by the number of clips that wind up in the top lists.

The app launches today (Thursday, March 26th) in the App Store, and as part of the launch, Whipclip has partnered with Comedy Central and Justin Bieber so viewers can clip their favorite moments from the live broadcast of the “Comedy Central Roast of Justin Bieber” this, Monday, March 30 at 10 p.m. Whipclip users will be able to create customized clips of the #BieberRoast and then share them to their social networks, the first time a televised event has been shared in real-time.

Really ambitious users can also Meerkat themselves Whipclipping moments from the Bieber Roast for total Social Television Synergy.

We will be keeping our eye on this promising second screen app as it rolls out and reporting back on the unique ways fans and marketers are using it.