BT Sport feeds fan reaction to pundits on live TV. BBC News broadcasts responses to the European referendum. Body Shop collects footage from beauty consultants. What links these videos? London-based startup Seenit, which lets companies crowdsource their smartphone footage - so they can find film without a crew. "I knew the amount of time, resources and effort that go into production," says founder Emily Forbes. "I realised I could pull footage from experts but with no budget or equipment."
Forbes, 29, a former documentary maker and producer, was shooting a film about rhino conservation protesters in South Africa in 2012 when she got the idea for Seenit. "I got to film the crowd, but everyone was already capturing it on their own devices," she says. Forbes began manually collecting clips - then realised how much easier it would be if her sources uploaded their video themselves. So, in January 2014, she quit her job and set up Seenit. "By April, we had worked with the BBC, Unilever and Betfred," she recalls. Since then, Seenit claims to have sold £2.3 million worth of its annual subscriptions and to have worked with more than 100 clients.
To use Seenit, companies first find suitable people to contribute video, then get them started with its invitation-only app. Forbes doesn't think of it as crowdsourcing: she doesn't want to pull in masses of footage, but instead supply film from hand-picked camera operators, often from inside corporate teams. When radio station KISS used Seenit, for example, it asked staff to upload film from red-carpet premieres. Retailer The Hut Group sent it to employees for a "day in the life" feature. "We've even got heads of departments using it to do quarterly reports," Forbes adds. Since 2014, 16,000 contributors have uploaded 135,000 videos. Payment isn't enabled yet, but companies offer non-monetary gifts.
Of course, video sites are hardly uncommon these days, but Forbes says that what sets Seenit apart from YouTube and Facebook is the control it gives its corporate customers - not only legally (permissions are granted on signup to the app) but also creatively. "They know it's going to be good," she says. "It's not like we're putting a call out on social with a hashtag."
Next, Forbes plans to develop Seenit's automated systems to identify objects, phrases and even emotions - all with the aim of making video quicker to access. "The way of creating content is changing," says Forbes. "We want to be the platform to allow that."
This article was originally published by WIRED UK
