Free mobile video app on iPhone from Metacafe and Babelgum

Mobile video specialist Babelgum hasn’t exactly been quiet so far this year. The company has been launching custom iPhone and iPod apps for brands like Coldplay and Funny or Die, and premiered a movie in the form of Sally Potter’s Rage. Now it has launched a free application for one of the most popular video services on the web - Metacafe.

What is Metacafe?

On the extremely slim chance that you’ve never been to a video-sharing site, Metacafe is a place where users come to upload and share short, original movie clips. As it has grown in popularity larger users, like movie companies, have used it to upload and share things like trailers. It’s much the same as YouTube, quite frankly, except that Metacafe wasn’t bought up by Google - and so it waves its “independent” banner quite proudly.

What is Babelgum?

We’ve reported on Babelgum several times before here on GoMo. It started its life as a free, on-demand internet TV company. Support by advertising, Babelgum provided its users with choosable TV content for free. In the past year, Babelgum has been making serious moves into the mobile market, with the original launch of the Babelgum Mobile app back in December of last year - making it practically a grand-daddy of the mobile application market. I couldn’t really tell you how well the Babelgum app has been doing… but the company has been using the experience of that launch to create a lot of bespoke apps for other brands that want to put video onto iPhone.

What’s the app?

So, starting today, you can download the Metacafe application for free.  The app features what Metecafe is calling a “curated collection” of video content appearing on the site, like movies, sports, music, comedy, etc. Metacafe brags an audience of over 45 million monthly viewers, and those that are living in the US, UK, Italy, Germany, France and Spain currently have access to the app.

And along with any financial remuneration Babelgum is getting, Metacafe is also launching a branded Babelgum channel on its own app. Here, users will be treated to a selection of Babelgum branded content like film, music, comedy, and “urban” content (does that mean hip-hop?).

What we think?

Once again, there is simply no proven model to suggest TV will work on mobile - but then again, this isn’t really a TV service is it? This is functionally like YouTube on your mobile - a service that’s already available to both iPhone and non-iPhone users. Metacafe has taken the sensible precaution of making the application free, but it can’t make the data free. This app will eat a lot of data, and when you take that into account the size of this apps audience starts looking pretty small. Metacafe is looking at an audience comprised of 1) Metacafe fans who 2) live one of the six launch countries 3) have an iPhone and 4) an unlimited data plan. Hmmmm.