Vimeo has announced that it has acquired Echograph, a popular app for iPhone and iPad from Clear-Media. Nick Alt, who was previously Clear-Media’s CEO, will take up a new position at Vimeo. Echograph is a premium app that creates videos that look like animated GIFs. As part of the acquisition, Vimeo is offering the app for free on iTunes, where it was previously sold for $1.99. Sounds like someone’s trying to get into the Vine game.
The team from Echograph will now report to Vimeo’s President Dae Mellencamp and app creator Nick Alt will take the position of Vimeo’s Vice President of Mobile and will lead development on all platforms. The terms of his deal with Vimeo have not been disclosed.
Kerry Trainor, Vimeo’s CEO, said, “we chose Echograph because it helps people easily create beautiful high quality video content. That, with Nick’s proven track record of building innovative video apps made it a perfect fit for Vimeo.”
Nick Alt, Echograph creator, responded to the acquisition, saying, “Vimeo to me is the most innovative video platform that empowers its users to share quality content. I’m very excited for our teams to come together to take Echograph to the next level and develop a new fleet of amazing mobile video apps.”
Typical rah-rah-rah type stuff from the acquirer and acquiree. The timing of this acquisition is quite interesting considering Vine, an app created and run by Twitter, is starting to take off in the short video/animated GIF space. Given Vimeo’s audience, we’re guessing the companies looking for more “produced” type content, whereas Vine is kinda more like the YouTube of animated GIF shorts.
Image Credit: Chrome Web Store
