VMIX Extends Video Streaming Technology with Invitation-Only Service

San Diego-based VMIX has been revising its strategy, which was originally focused on providing a technology platform that enables TV stations and other media companies to stream online video. Earlier this year, VMIX began rolling out technology that allowed consumers to use the company’s video streaming technology on social media sites like Facebook.

Now the six-year-old startup is launching Givit, a new consumer-oriented business that makes it easy for users to share video privately. In contrast to posting a video on Facebook, where just about anyone can see it, Givit users can selectively send a private video link to designated friends and family.

After introducing a beta version of Givit last month, VMIX says today that users can download the Givit app for use on the iPhone and iPad. The technology was previously available as an app for Windows or Mac OS-based laptops and desktop PCs.

Basic Givit service is free; service that provides additional video storage capacity is available as a subscription. While there are plenty of competitors that already enable consumers to share videos online, VMIX says Givit is the only video-sharing service designed to restrict the people who can watch a video.

“One of our big value propositions is private video,” VMIX CEO Greg Kostello told me earlier this week. “There already are a number of ways to share video publicly through Facebook. But everyone who sees it is not necessarily a friend. They just friended me.”

In a statement from the company today, Kostello says, “Smartphones are now the camera of choice for recording everyday moments, but sharing mobile video is often a frustrating process. Givit makes it easy-and most importantly, by default we share securely and privately, rather than broadcasting your personal content across public social networks.”

Author: Bruce V. Bigelow

In Memoriam: Our dear friend Bruce V. Bigelow passed away on June 29, 2018. He was the editor of Xconomy San Diego from 2008 to 2018. Read more about his life and work here. Bruce Bigelow joined Xconomy from the business desk of the San Diego Union-Tribune. He was a member of the team of reporters who were awarded the 2006 Pulitzer Prize in National Reporting for uncovering bribes paid to San Diego Republican Rep. Randy “Duke” Cunningham in exchange for special legislation earmarks. He also shared a 2006 award for enterprise reporting from the Society of Business Editors and Writers for “In Harm’s Way,” an article about the extraordinary casualty rate among employees working in Iraq for San Diego’s Titan Corp. He has written extensively about the 2002 corporate accounting scandal at software goliath Peregrine Systems. He also was a Gerald Loeb Award finalist and National Headline Award winner for “The Toymaker,” a 14-part chronicle of a San Diego start-up company. He takes special satisfaction, though, that the series was included in the library for nonfiction narrative journalism at the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University. Bigelow graduated from U.C. Berkeley in 1977 with a degree in English Literature and from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism in 1979. Before joining the Union-Tribune in 1990, he worked for the Associated Press in Los Angeles and The Kansas City Times.