What Is Socialcam? Looking Back on the Fun App

Video and mobile are huge these days and, when you put them together, it gets even better. YouTube is probably the most popular video platform. Still, smaller ones that focus more on user interaction have started popping up more and more—one of which was called Socialcam.

What Was Socialcam?

From the creators of Justin.tv, Socialcam was a mobile app that allowed users to easily capture and share new videos. You could customize your videos using Socialcam's built-in editor with vintage video filters, custom titles, and sound clips.

Socialcam Features

If you're familiar with Instagram, you've probably noticed a lot of similarities with the layout of Socialcam. There was a menu at the bottom of the screen, so you could navigate between the main tabs, just like Instagram.

Here is a breakdown of the main features Socialcam offered:

• Video feed: All the videos and activity of users you were following, similar to Instagram's photo feed.
• Popular: Videos that were getting the most likes and comments.
• Friends: List of the users that were your friends on Socialcam.
• Activity: Summary of who followed you and liked or commented on your videos.
• Unlimited video recording: Socialcam didn't give you a limit to length.
• Cloud storage: All videos were uploaded fast and stored in the cloud, so you could delete them off your phone without worrying about storage limitations.
• Privacy: You were in complete control of who could see your videos; you could customize each video so that it was private or public.
• Editing: You could apply vintage and experimental filters to your videos, create titles, or choose any of Socialcam's soundtrack effects to play in the background.
• Social Integration: You could easily share any of your videos on Facebook, X (formerly Twitter), YouTube, via Email, or through SMS text messaging.
• Notifications: When another user liked or commented on one of your videos, you were notified immediately.
• Fast uploads: Videos were uploaded very fast in the background, and you could upload pre-recorded video from your Camera roll as well.

Using Socialcam

After downloading the Socialcam app from iTunes or from Google Play to your iPhone or Android device, Socialcam asked you to create a new account by signing up through email or by connecting through your existing Facebook or X account.

Socialcam would then pull up a list of recommended users that you could start following if you were interested. After that, you could start recording videos.

A red circular icon at the bottom of the app activated Socialcam's camera. You could then switch between the front and back camera before recording. Once you pressed stop, Socialcam would ask you to enter a title and choose your video privacy settings.

You could choose a theme and background music before tagging the post with people you know and sending the finished video to people through email or posting it to social networking sites.

Expert Review of Socialcam

We got started with short videos on Viddy (also a discontinued service), which was quite similar to Socialcam. Both provided nearly the exact same features, and both could be described as an "Instagram for video."

We liked that Socialcam allowed unlimited video lengths. The 15 seconds that Viddy capped its videos at wasn't a very long time, so Socialcam was a great option for people who wanted to share longer videos.

Personally, we did like the darker layout of Viddy better than Socialcam's layout. The video feed looked a little bit messy, and we heard that the Android app hadn't been updated in some time, so we assume it wouldn't work very well on Android.

Overall, Socialcam was extremely easy to use. We loved that you were asked after every video to choose your privacy settings and whether you wanted to share it on social media sites.