Ferris crowdsources mobile video to create an evolving story of the world around you

Ferris launched a mobile video application today so you never have to miss out on memorable moments.

The Austin, Texas, startup automatically connects user-generated video clips based on user, location, date and time, hashtag, and category to create a single stream of any given experience. Rather than perusing individual videos, each video becomes part of a wider narrative that evolves over time as more content is added.

“There are so many moments in life that you don’t really know about, and we want to be the glue that brings them all together,” said cofounder and CEO Paul Boukadakis in an interview with VentureBeat. “We are taking a fundamentally different approach to mobile video with the idea that the collective is more powerful than the singular experience. We facilitate a level of collaboration that is missing from any other player on the market.”

Online video is growing right now. Cisco predicted in its Visual Networking Index that video traffic would more than quadruple by 2015 and that two-thirds of the information on the Internet will consist of video. Accordingly, a horde of startups a creating video-centric products, such as Instagram video, Twitter’s Vine, Viddy, Vyclone, Quicki (bought by Yahoo earlier this month), and social video services like Socialcam.

Boukadakis said Ferris stands out because it is building “living” video stories that are “greater than the individual.” The inspiration for Ferris came after a birthday party. Boukadakis wanted to film the entire event, but so many people were spread out over multiple rooms, and the party was so long, that he just couldn’t do so by himself. However, several people took videos on their phones, and those videos captured a wider range of more intimate details. This sparked the idea for Ferris — a service that could automatically knit all these videos together into a cohesive whole.

Each video stream is thoroughly indexed and interactive so you can speed up, slow down, skip ahead, etc. Ferris includes an “Explore” feature, where users can find videos by zooming in on a map, selecting a date, browsing through a theme, or typing in a hashtag, like a music festival.

“You could be in the front row at a concert and not know that you have a friend 100 rows back or what is happening backstage. Every object, person, and place has a story, and the power behind Ferris is the capability to build those stories automatically but to also go back in time at any point and see whats happening and what is continuing to happen.”

Boukadakis and cofounders Chris Shaheen, J.B. Hager, and Brian Daugherty have been developing the product for two year. They wanted to make the process of capturing and sharing video as easy as possible before launching while also building technology that could connect all the videos in a meaningful way with minimal editing and users input.

Ferris is free and available in iOS.