Category: HipHip.app

After much thought, I’ve decided to wind down the video celebration app I created, HipHip.app.

All servers will be going offline shortly.

Fun Project, Lots of Learning

I started HipHip as a “give back” project during COVID. I noticed that several people were lamenting online that they were going to miss big milestones in-person: celebrations, graduations, birthdays, anniversaries, and memorials. I had been learning a bunch about user-video upload and creation, and I wanted to put those skills to use.

I built HipHip.app, a celebration video creator. I didn’t actually know at the time that there were such services — and it turns out, it’s a pretty crowded marketplace!

While HipHip delivered hundreds of great videos for people in its roughly two years on the market, it struggled to be anything more than a hobby/lifestyle project. It began under the unique circumstances of lockdown, helping people celebrate. That purpose was well served!

Now that the lockdown/remote phase of COVID is over, the economics of the business showed that it’s unlikely to turn into a self-sustaining business any time soon. There are some category leaders that have really strong search engine presence which is pretty expensive to dislodge.

I want to turn my energies to other projects, and free up time and budget for other things. COVID lockdown is over, and a lot of people want a respite from recording and Zoom-like interactions, including me.

It was a terrific, educational project. It kept me busy, learning, and productive. HipHip delivered hundreds of celebration videos for people around the world.

I’ve learned a ton about programmatic video creation, technology stacks like Next.js, Azure and React, and likely will apply these learnings to new projects, or perhaps share them with others via e-learning courses.

Among the videos people created were graduation videos, videos to celebrate new babies, engagement, birthdays, anniversaries and the attainment of US Citizenship.

In the end, the CPU processing and storage required for online video creation meant that it could not be done for free forever, and after testing a few price-points, there seems only so much willingness to pay in a crowded market.

Thanks everyone for your great feedback and ideas!

HipHip.app is off to a pretty good start, having just completed its 100th celebration video! So many fun graduation videos — it really is a pleasure, as a side-benefit of this project, to see so many terrific celebrations of people and important milestones.

I began this project in late April. So far, we’ve had surprise videos for graduations, US citizenship ceremonies, anniversaries, baby showers, kids and adult birthdays, employee appreciations and more. Over 1,000 people have signed HipHip cards.

The signature and video upload process has been greatly streamlined. I’ve added a quick “How it Works” page, complete with a sample celebration video, used with permission.

If you’re interested in giving it a whirl for your grad or June/July celebration, it’s still 100% free while in beta, and I imagine that beta will continue for another few weeks. I will likely be adding the pay-wall in a couple weeks, making it $19.95 to create a video/card. There are several more ideas on our public roadmap.

We’ve also launched a new blog, and in the future will be putting HipHip-related articles there. It’s available off the main menu of https://hiphip.app, or directly at:

blog.hiphip.app

Thanks friends for lots of great input and ideas!

As the beta of HipHip.app continues, I’m so happy to see that nearly one hundred people have now created HipHip cards to honor their 2020 graduate, birthday, or celebrate other big milestone event. People have turned to HipHip to celebrate graduations, citizenship ceremonies, wedding anniversaries, moves to new cities, baby showers and birthdays.

I’m very pleased to announce a few new major features that have been in the works now for several weeks:

• Celebration Video
• “Keep it a Surprise” Option
• Customize your card
• Google Contacts integration
• Text the card to yourself

Let’s go through them one by one.

Celebration Video!

First and foremost, the big new feature is here!

HipHip will now automatically produce a Celebration Video from all the signatures submitted, and email you a link to it before your event.

Here’s how it works. Set a “Video Production Date”, and on that date, HipHip will create a custom video from your card and email you the link.

Background

When you create a HipHip card, people can sign it with videos, photos, and notes. They can sign from their phones, tablets, or a desktop computer. They can record their own short “huzzah!” video from any webcam, or upload one they’ve already made. Or, they can add a photo or image that they think the honoree might appreciate. Or they can write a heartfelt note. HipHip supports lots of media input types, and it does all the collection for you.

When your video production date arrives, all these signatures will be compiled automatically into a celebration video, complete with soundtrack, title slides, animations and more. They are themed for the occasion.

You can download the video for your own use, and share it freely on social media, such as YouTube, Vimeo, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, wherever you’d like.

Looking for samples

Are you a beta tester? HipHip has produced and emailed links to the first several dozen of these. They look fantastic. We are looking for a few examples to share in our marketing materials; we won’t do so without your permission, and we’d be happy to blur out the names or personally identifiable information. Jot us a note if you’d be willing to share your video; we’ve got an offer to thank you in return.

Setting Your Deadlines

Card authors set the”Signatures Due By” and the “Video Production” dates when they create the card. These can be adjusted at any time.

On the video production date, HipHip will create the video from the card signatures assembled, and email the card author a link to it.

Keep It A Surprise

Card creators can now choose to keep everyone’s signature hidden until the video production date. When people sign the card, they don’t see what others have written. Card creators still see what everyone’s contributed as they come in.

If you’ve already created a card, no problem! You can switch to the surprise option if you’d like. Simply visit your “My Cards” area and choose the “Edit Details and Dates” option.

Customize Your Card

You can now choose from over a dozen backgrounds for your card.

Choose the “Customize” option in the Card view.

Choose from Your Google Contacts!

If you use Gmail or Google Contacts, you’ll find a handy way to send your card out for signature. Rest assured that all HipHip does is use these contacts to present you an easy “pick-list.”

Where to Find It

You can find the link to email your invitation toward the bottom of the “Share Card” page. Click the big blue button to connect to Google, and then put a checkmark next to each contact you’d like to email.

Text the Link to your Phone

Some of the highest response-rates have come via text.

Be sure to text the link to your card to yourself. We’ve provided a handy way to do that on the “Share” page.

You can also click the “QR Code” button to scan a QR code from your phone to get the link.

More Ideas? Join the Conversation.

We have lots on the product roadmap.

I’d love to hear your ideas to make this an even easier way to create great celebration mementos. Please drop by the HipHip group on Facebook and share your thoughts.

I’ve created HipHip.app to help you gather memories and kudos from far-flung friends and family.

It’s really easy to create a Group Card, and invite friends and family to sign. You get keepsake videos, testimonials and notes; HipHip does all the collection for you.

Create a Card.

All you do is head over to hiphip.app, create a card by answering a few questions:

Customize Your Card.

Great! Your card is now created. You get a permanent URL for it, and a handy QR code if you’d like to share it in person or printout. You can change the hero photo and soon a few other options to make it your own.

Sign It: Add Video, Photos, GIPHYs and Text.

Visitors (including you) can now sign it by adding a video (record from webcam or upload it from your phone), add a photo, or add a GIPHY animation. You can add as many of these as you like. You can think of it as a semi-private Instagram feed, dedicated to the person and occasion.

HipHip supports JPG, JPEG, HEIC, MOV, and MP4 uploads. And it has a built-in webcam recorder that works from Chrome, the new Microsoft Edge, Firefox, and Safari.

Add a caption and a story, and click “Save!” That’s it.

Invite Friends & Family.

Now comes the fun part — simply share the URL for the card Facebook and via email with friends and family.

You can also let HipHip.app email friends for you. They’ll get a link where they can sign the card. No uploads to YouTube or file sharing services, no dropbox handoffs, nothing. Just a card that gets better with each signature.

You get a bunch of videos celebrating your graduate, as well as photos, fun animations, and sentiment from all over the world.

It’s that easy!

It’s currently in open beta, and free during the beta period.

After this beta period is over, there might be a hosting charge (in the range of less than twenty dollars), but any cards created during the beta period are free.

Give it a try, at hiphip.app.

Note that it’s “.app”, not .com. And congratulations to the Class of 2020!

Now in Beta Testing

Have you ever tried to pull together a celebration video or a group card for a party? Today, I’m introducing a much easier way to do that:

hiphip.app

The first target use-cases are for graduations and commencement celebrations, particularly college and high school graduations in 2020.

But it’s also applicable for birthdays, weddings, teacher appreciations, first-responder appreciations, retirement celebrations, bar mitzvahs, bat mitzvahs, staff appreciations, promotions and more.

The Problem

In 2020, nearly all commencement ceremonies have been cancelled. Many parents are trying to pull together milestone videos, photo boards and Zoom chats with relatives for their June graduates to help recognize their accomplishments, and make these moments special.

I’m trying to make the whole process of collecting videos, souvenir photos and notes of appreciation easier.

While the initial focus is on the graduates, they’re not the only ones missing out on milestone celebrations. Many parties are going virtual-only.

This site is also very useful for pulling together appreciation videos for essential workers, like healthcare workers, teachers and more. The possibilities here are vast. Why not take a moment to gather appreciative thoughts for those people you want to celebrate?

Pricing

It’s 100% free through beta testing, at a minimum through Memorial Day 2020, and very likely for several weeks after that.

There will, at some stage, be a nominal cost for these things. That’s because storage and compute time on the Internet aren’t free. But that will be worked out over the coming weeks, and once we roll out pricing, we’ll still offer a way for any content submitted between now and then (and likely several weeks after) to be easily downloaded for free.

Origin

Last month, in a parents’ group on Facebook for my son’s university, after the school announced that graduation ceremonies were cancelled for 2020, quite a few parents started exchanging ways to still express celebration, reflection and connection.

I’ve made such celebration videos before, and the process of collecting various videos from people is like herding cats. Yes, you can email your friends and family, but most email services disallow large files. You also can’t just send a text for the same reason. Some friends have iPhones, some Android, some older relatives only have desktop computers. And have you ever tried to walk your in-laws through uploading something from their phone to YouTube? etc.

Additionally, some people just want to write notes and share a photo.

As it happens, I had just finished some work on making browser-based webcam recordings easier. So I took those components, and set to work on a project to make this whole Group Card collection process easier.

This project is pretty bare-bones at the moment, focused primarily on the media collection workflow — but it already is very useful for this May and June’s graduations and weddings, so I wanted to get it out the door and get feedback.

All data is backed up to the cloud; don’t worry about losing any memories. But functionality will absolutely change over the coming weeks.

Here’s how it works

• Step 1: Answer a few quick questions to set up a celebration. Who’s the honoree? When’s the date? When do you need videos submitted by? Etc.

• Step 2: You’ll get a permalink web address for that celebration. You can share that link with the friends and family of the honoree. It also has a handy way to invite people to the page.
  
  The feed is rather like Instagram, keeping things familiar. It allows posts of images, photos, videos and stories, but with a single topic — it’s just for that person and event, and the content is controlled by the organizer.
  
• Step 3. Friends and relatives can easily record “congratulations” video messages from their webcams or mobile phones and click one button to upload it to the page. They can also add photos or a story. They can edit these at any time. The organizer can download this content at any time, edit or remove these posts on the group card.

Coming soon

I wanted to get the initial memory-collection site up as quickly as possible. Coming soon, the site will assemble a montage video for the organizer, let them share followup photos, and a few other nice features to come.

Pricing

All events planned during the beta period are 100% free of charge.

Storage and computing do cost money, so I will be charging a fee at some threshold when this comes out of beta — likely via some pricing model that lets people add, say, fifteen memories to a board for free, but has a modest one-time unlock charge to see those beyond the first fifteen. Or perhaps it’s free, but with a watermark, and a fee unlocks it. I don’t yet know.

After looking around in the marketplace, I didn’t see anything that filled this need well. I think this site can be very useful to a lot of people.

I’m looking for feedback — please drop me a note either here, or on Twitter!

And go celebrate someone you love:

https://videokudos.com.

Thanks,

Steve