Today when we think of easy video editors, familiar names such as iMovie, Elements and some online options come to mind. In this over-saturated industry, it's hard for a startup to weather the storm. JayCut is just one example going through its ebbs and flows.
The History of JayCut
JayCut AB is a Swedish tech company offering online video editing solutions of the same name, JayCut. It is born at the Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm, as a few students there started this project.
Jonas Hombert is the co-founder and CEO of JayCut AB, and Patrick Tunedal Bano is the co-founder. There are only seven employees in this Stockholm-based company.
It started off as a free online video editor catering to general users, and later in 2008, JayCut expanded its service to include B2B. JayCut AB then offered licenses to other websites to integrate the video technology online, under their own brand. A notable example is IKEA's online video solution – IKEA TV.
Below are the timelines of JayCut:
- Dec. 2006 – The primitive public alpha was released.
- June 2007 – The JayCut team published the public beta. It supported English and Swedish.
- Nov. 2007 and Jan. 2008 – Spanish and Polish language supports were added subsequently.
- 2010 – JayCut started to offer API for potential clients, and there are thousands of websites accessing their API by August 2010.
- Feb. 2010 – JayCut joined the Mobile Word Congress 2010 as a mobile application at the Intel booth.
- July 2011 – JayCut announced in their news press that they have joined the Research in Motion (RIM) of Blackberry, though both parties hadn't disclosed details of the acquisition.
- Nov. 2011 – JayCut stated that they would shut down the online video editor on Jan. 31, 2012.
An Ambitious Startup in Online Video Editing
If you have ever visited their About page, you will find that JayCut had been quite ambitious in their business. Proud of their technology and framework, JayCut stated that their work had laid the foundation for the service to be "the world's most advanced technology for online video editing".
As a company filled with young blood, JayCut aspired to change the situation of online video. By asking themselves the question "what if web video is more than just consumption", JayCut wanted to provide their potential users with a free tool to create the video, with capturing, editing, and publishing tools all packed in the online editor.
That passion for creativity and web video has since fueled this startup for the upcoming years.
The Services and Products from JayCut
In their early days, JayCut offers a free online video editor, with features that resemble popular desktop video editors in 2007. End users can easily capture videos, make edits and save the video or directly publish it to YouTube.
From 2008 to 2010, JayCut also added B2B services. For any business interested in integrating an online video editor on their website, JayCut offers licensing and tech support for them. They can also have the video editor branded as requested.
The integration is made possible by accessing the public API of JayCut.
JayCut is profitable with the B2B licensing service as well as the paid service of its video platform. The online video editor is free for most cases, with a 2GB storage limitation and up to 20 videos per month. Still, JayCut offers paid plan for avid users.
JayCut as the Awards-wining Online Video Editing Platform
JayCut received several awards shortly after the company made its debut in 2007.
Internetworld from IDG, a Swedish e-business publication, announced the CEO of JayCut as the Top 5 Swedish Entrepreneur of the Year 2007. It highly praised Jonas Hombert for the creation of "the next-generation video community", saying that JayCut is the opposite of those complicated editing programs.
The popularity of JayCut was well explained in the use case described by Internetworld "After the skiing holiday, you create a group for you and your friends..together you can create the film from the trip". The ease of creating something out of your every clip early in 2007 has made JayCut a hit.
In the same year, the CEO of JayCut received recognition from Business Week as the Young European Entrepreneur of the Year 2007.
In 2008, JayCut received the SIME Innovation Day Award from Google, Telenor and Ericsson. In the same year, the business part of "IKEA - This year's Smartest Web TV" went to JayCut. This event held by IKEA aims to reward "video initiatives that utilize the Internet's opportunities for social dialogue and interactivity".
In 2009, JayCut was elected as a finalist for the Red Herring 100 Global Award from a pool of 1200. As a global media company, Red Herring aims to provide insights on trending innovations worldwide, and that's the reason it featured JayCut as an emerging technology in that time.
Reviews of JayCut by Tech Publications
In the early 2000s when editing on desktop software is the norm, JayCut made its way to a popular video editor by competing in the online lane. Joshua Price from MakeTechEasier.com remarked that, it is not a problem if you don't have a desktop video editor, as JayCut is as competent as its desktop counterparts. Joshua estimated that JayCut would soon challenge the belief that "web apps will never quite match the speed, power and comfort of local applications".
Ken Shi from AppStorm.net also praised JayCut as the best online alternative to desktop video editors. The author acknowledged the cloud computing benefits that are innate for web apps.
Josh Catone from Sitepoint.com saw JayCut as a promising competitor for iMovie. The author listed notable software in their sector of the industry, speculating that desktop apps will face the challenge by new players as "software applications move to the cloud".
Christian Zibreg from Geek.com credits the nice performance of JayCut to its flash player framework. Siting from Kessels that "Flash Player 10.1 outperforms HTML5, which is true due to hardware-accelerated H.264 video decoding", Christian addressed that JayCut as a flash app can outperform some of Apple HTML5 demos.
Although we all know now what happens to Flash Player, the reviews above still serve as a record of the polarity of JayCut at that time.
RIM from BlackBerry Acquired JayCut
On July 22, 2011, RIM (Research In Motion) from BlackBerry announced in its news release that JayCut had joined RIM now. David Yach, Chief Technology Officer at RIM said in the press that they are "excited that the JayCut team is bringing their expertise in video editing and cloud-based services to the BlackBerry platform".
They also planned to provide users of the BlackBerry PlayBook (a min tablet) with better multimedia features, and were expecting JayCut to add video editing features to the BlackBerry platform.
The acquisition is also noted from Jaycut.com. Jonas Hombert regarded it as an exciting day, saying that they can "stay creative and we get to focus solely on developing great video editing tools, which has the potential to be used by many millions of users". After talking to Mike Lazaridis, RIM’s CEO, and founders of The Astonishing Tribe (TAT), an UI design company acquired by BlackBerry, Jonas said "I could see that we would fit in well with them".
Neither RIM nor JayCut has revealed further details on developing the editing tools, only saying that some creative stuff will come out soon.
What Then Happened to JayCut
JayCut announced the nixing of the online video editor on November 30, 2011, and stated that the company will completely shut down the service on January 31, 2012. During the remaining two months, users can save their unfinished projects, download media, and archive stuff they need, but registering a new account was not available immediately after the announcement.
The domain name of JayCut.com went on sale, JayCut.es no longer exists, and JayCut.se stayed on the goodbye page, quietly announcing the demise of this online video editor.
