I’ve been following Animoto – an automated music video creation company  – ever since they first launched on Facebook in March 2008, and although they are tight-lipped about their success, I feel they have a smart, expandable business model for online video.  The company reached out recently to let us know about their upcoming 2nd Annual Valentine’s Day Video, and I thought I’d take the opportunity to look at their existing services, business models and share a bit of opinion about their current offerings.
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Animoto, the service that lets you turn your images into a professional video, is launching a new feature that will get you into the holiday spirit (as if you needed help in that department!). Taking the concept of the e card, Animoto is taking things to the next level by offering holiday-themed greeting cards from your Animoto videos.

The whole holiday theme option is in fact incorporated into Animoto’s music library as well, with its own holiday genre. What’s great about the new holiday Animoto themes is that they’re very crisp and are well designed. Customized with your own images and music selection, you may like the new Animoto holiday themes enough to replace those Walgreens-printed cards you send out year after year.
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Earlier this morning Animoto announced that they had received funding from Amazon.com. This wasn’t surprising news considering Jeff Bezos’ decision to include Animoto in his presentation at the YCombinator Startup School event. I’ve written about Animoto before over at AllFacebook and have used it numerous times to create videos including the one displayed below.

Animoto automatically integrates music and video to create unique custom embeddable videos. You can use Animoto’s library of music or upload your own music to include in the videos. If you ever want to make a really slick presentation definitely use Animoto. There are no details as to how much money was raised in this new round of funding but this round makes a lot of sense.

Ultimately Amazon is investing in a company that is using Amazon’s EC2 and S3 services to scale their business rapidly. That’s a pretty smart play by Amazon! Congratulations to the Animoto team. This company is on the fast track to success.