Hands on: MixBit is not another YouTube—but that's OK
The operative concept behind MixBit, a new iPhone video sharing app from the good folks who brought us YouTube is mix. Created by AVOS Systems, a company led by YouTube cofounders Chad Hurley and Steve Chen, the free MixBit is currently on iOS but is soon destined for Android too.
Shoot new clips or assemble clips from your Camera Roll.
The difference between MixBit and the rather awesome YouTube Capture, Montaj, and a host of others—not to mention the ubiquitous Vine and Instagram—is a social swapping component that lets users in the MixBit community incorporate other people's content into their own videos. With the MixBit community behind you, you can create videos that you never would have been able to if left to your own devices. Individual clips can be up to 16 seconds long, and you're able to stitch up to 256 clips together for a movie spanning about an hour.
This idea could work in certain instances, such as crowdsharing an event, or examining a popular theme (denoted by a hashtag), such as cats or the ocean. But given the sheer number of videos already posted on MixBit's site, it seems unlikely that most people are going to take the time to dig through that amount of content for the exact clip that fits into their Taco Stand tour de force. For one, you have to visit the website to make a project using other people's clips—you can't do it in the app. And strangely, you can't make a friends list, or search for clips by who shot them. Publicly shared MixBit videos are anonymous, which seems odd for a video-sharing app—will anyone bother to keep uploading videos if they can't build their own following?
Minimalist interface and instructions
While MixBit is fairly easy to use once you learn your way around, the black minimalist interface at first seems counterintuitive and rough around the edges. A small icon at the upper-right leads to your video clips, while a plus icon in a square on the opposite corner leads you to the capture pane where the familiar red Record button resides. But it really shouldn't take an extra tap before you're able to record.
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