LAS VEGAS ― Shoot videos and send them to your friends with a smartphone, or just broadcast the beautiful mountainous or coastal views you are now seeing in real time. Such mobile video messaging is currently garnering attention, posing a challenge to the text-based mobile messaging services including Kakao Talk and Line.

Spearheading what could be the next wave of mobile messaging, Glide, an Israel-based video messaging application developer, showed confidence in competing with the traditional powerhouses of the mobile messaging industry.

“You couldn’t have done it on Snapchat, you couldn’t have done it on WhatsApp. You couldn’t have done it on any of those mobile chatting apps,” said Glide’s communications head Chaim Haas of the firm’s cloud computing-based video chatting service, which allows users to send a video message up to 5 minutes long to 50 people.

Glide was showcasing its services at the International CES in Las Vegas, held earlier this month.

Once sent to others, videos are stored in Glide’s cloud and can be viewed and deleted weeks or even months later. Glide also allows users to text while watching video messages.

With anticipated updates this month, Glide will also be equipped with an offline mode, so users can store messages without a network connection and send them as soon as the device is connected. 

A minute of video just takes about 1-2 megabytes and a five-minute video takes about 10MBs in data transfer over the network. There is, however, no need to worry about the smartphone storage since the Glide videos take no space on smartphones, the start-up points out.

Like at many other innovative start-ups, the founders of Glide came up with the idea for the video chatting app out of necessity. When they were all living away from their family, video call services like Skype were inconvenient for them because of the time differences.

Videos can be shared with other Glide users or to Facebook, Twitter, email or SMS, but Chaim said users don’t even have to worry about accidentally sending videos to the wrong people, as the senders can simply delete the original message and it will erase from the devices of both parties. 

“Glide is the only app that puts the power of control into the hands of the video creator,” Haas said.

Glide is also planning to bring the instant video message service to smart watches like Apple’s iWatch or Samsung Electronics’ Gear lineup.

Chaim said the firm has already tested the compatibility of their app on the earlier models of Samsung smart watches, and Apple’s smart watch, which is expected to be rolled out this year.

“We believe that the smartwatch is going to create huge opportunities for video messaging, because on a smart watch with a tiny screen and even a smaller keyboard, you are not going to be text messaging,” he said.

By Kim Young-won (wone0102@heraldcorp.com)