Social video startup uvLayer looks to be growing up fast

Social video startup Unknown Vector launched a browser-based version of its uvLayer application yesterday.

I covered the company back in February following the release of its uvLayer desktop-only app (built on Adobe AIR), and I was pretty impressed with it then. The application lets users create “stacks” of videos collected from YouTube and Truveo via simple drag and drop. 

You can also build collections of videos based on a search term, and when you access the video via that search term, you can drag and drop it onto a canvas-like screen (see screenshot below). Multiple videos appear as thumbnail-sized stacks. You can also import friends from Facebook, and an activity label shows you what your friends are watching at any time. By dragging and dropping a video collection on a friend’s buddy icon, you can send videos to friends to watch.

And you can create a playlists, so you can watch multiple videos in sequence without having to go back, search, and hit play.

It was a cool application on the desktop, but the new browser-based version promises to take the company to a broader market.

The company has also added features for video sharing across Instant Messaging platforms AIM and Gtalk, where users login with their credentials on uvLayer and can drag and drop video collections with friends, who then follow the link back to uvLayer.

This is definitely a company to watch. They’re a seven-person team, and have bootstrapped so far. But they seem to be moving fast — after getting significant uptake in international markets, they’ve already translated the application into 13 languages, including Arabic, Russian, Chinese, Spanish, and French — with even more languages planned. They’ve had help from the Adobe AIR team, which tours Europe and features uvLayer’s desktop app as an example of what can be done with Adobe Air.

And they’ve got big aspirations. Cofounder Mark Gray says the company sees touch-screen applications as the future of computing and wants to be the video interface for that future. When uvLayer first prototyped its desktop app, the company showed it off on touch-screen hardware. So we can expect to see more developments from Unknown Vector on that front.

Gray and the company’s other cofounder, Michael Hoydich, say their next plan is to release a widget that lets users publish video collections to their own websites or blogs as well as a chat interface directly in uvLayer.

For now, the company is not releasing metrics. It’s still developing its business model, but is focused for now on driving new viewers to its application. It may also look to more content acquisition — it only draws from YouTube and Truveo currently — but Hoydich and Gray say they haven’t seen major demand from users so far for additional content sources.

Gray and Hoydich have worked for years in the online industry for companies like Yahoo Geocities and Excite and have founded and led two companies –IndustryNext and Incognito Digital. They’re in talks with early-stage VCs and say they hope to secure an investment in the near future. Their team is based in New York and San Francisco.

David Adewumi, a contributing writer with VentureBeat, is the founder & CEO of http://heekya.com a social storytelling platform billed “The Wikipedia of Stories.”