New generation of tech led by $19 billion Whatsapp

iphone video messaging app Samba

HOST: The social media industry’s buzzing this week over Facebook’s announcement it’s buying Whatsapp for $19 billion dollars. That’s a pretty big price tag for something that’s basically a cheaper version of a text message. At Social Media Week in Chelsea, it seemed these kinds of apps geared for smaller communications,  as opposed to the Facebooks and MySpaces of the past are becoming part of a  growing trend. Hilary Brueck has the story.

If you think of the older generation of social media like Facebook and Twitter as broadcasters. Then the new generation of social media are more like talking on the phone. The messages are shorter, the audiences are smaller.

Take Vine. It lets you produce 6-second videos, it records by touching your phone screen. If you just tap the screen, it records a single frame. That lets you make short animations.

One of the animators who’s doing that is Andrew Jive, yes, that is the name on his business card. He says Vine is empowering.

JIVE: Vine’s been great because it’s taking tools that a lot of professionals have, and giving it out to the masses.

Other new apps are tailored to smaller audiences. For example Samba, it’s a new video-app that launched yesterday for iphone. Say you shoot a video on your phone. Send it to your friends. And as they watch it, their own phone records the look on their faces. And sends them back to you.

Barack Hachamov, created Samba. He says our own faces allow us to express more than what we can with older social media.

BARACK: You know, the like, the comments, the re-tweet, the smiley icon, they are great, but I don’t think there’s nothing that compete right now with the smile of your face, that only me, by the way, could see it.

The apps are changing because the user base is changing. They’re younger users who grew up with cell phones their whole lives. But as always, the Marketers are there too.

Andrew Jive says corporations want people to watch them too.

JIVE: every brand’s kind of wanting to be a high school kid, they want to have followers, friends, things to post.

And the social media conference organizer says the $19 billion price tag may just be an indication of how influential this smaller world of social might be.

Hilary Brueck, Columbia Radio News.