YouTube Founders Unveil MixBit, Their Semi-Competitor to Vine and Instagram

In the ongoing battle for who can master the art of short, share-able video clips, Twitter’s Vine and Facebook’s Instagram currently reign supreme. However, some other big players are looking to get in on the action, and it’s no less than the creators of the world’s largest video provider and platform: YouTube.

Chad Hurley and Steve Chen, founders of YouTube, finally lifted the veil off their long-in-development project: a mobile application called MixBit. It’s designed similarly to competitor apps like Vine and Instagram, in that it allows you to tap the screen and quickly record video for instant online publishing, but has a greater emphasis on editing. And while Vine allows for 6 seconds of recording, and Instagram allows for 15 seconds, MixBit can take up to 16 seconds of video.

Unlike Instagram and Vine, MixBit comes with a streamlined suite of in-app editing tools that help you mix and match clips to create the perfect video. And though Instagram recently introduced some minor editing tools of its own, MixBit seems prepared out of the gate to give users a more substantial tool-set. You can cut, stitch and “mix” videos how you see fit – even if you want to combine 256 individual clips into an hour-long video. It’s totally up to you.

Final videos you publish can be uploaded to Twitter, Facebook, Google Plus or the MixBit’s own social website. If you choose to share on the MixBit site, though, and enable public viewing and editing, anyone can edit and remix a posted video.

“The whole purpose of MixBit is to reuse the content within the system,” said YouTube founder Chad Hurley in an interview.

“I really want to focus on great stories that people can tell.”

There is one important caveat to note about MixBit: it is entirely anonymous. Unlike Vine and Instagram, users cannot post videos under a name, nor can they comment on the work of others. This means MixBit will lack the discoverability factor (at least initially) of great video makers like Will Sasso, which apps like Vine and Instagram prominently boast.

Then again, MixBit positions itself a bit differently than Vine or Instagram. It, with its bevy of editing tools, might just solve the issue with video editing on-the-go. If it’s straightforward enough, but also deep enough to make some impressive videos, its content could stand out much differently than a quickly and hastily shot in-the-moment clip.

As MixBit’s slogan describes, it’s all about the simple “shoot, mix, share” experience. The app will be available starting tomorrow on iOS devices, with an Android release to follow in several weeks.