A sure sign that a social media service like Viddy has arrived is not just whether Justin Bieber is on it (he is), but how many Justin Bieber imitators it's accrued—I stopped counting at two dozen. The pop idol is even quoted on Viddy's iTunes App Store page: "I'm into Viddy because I can just be me and show my fans the fun parts of my day." But in addition to having this indisputable social network cred, Viddy is a darned good iPhone video app. It does limit the videos you shoot to 30 seconds—far less draconian than Vine but still avoiding the too-long, dull videos possible with Socialcam.

Getting Started with Viddy

As with most of the social photo and video apps these days, you can quickly acquire a Viddy account by using your Facebook or Twitter credentials. I tested Viddy on both an iPhone 5( at Amazon) and an iPhone 4S. If you sign in with Facebook, you can follow all your Friends who use Viddy. You'll see a feed of their videos right after creating your account. Viddy chose an auto-generated user name for me based on my Facebook name; you can change this—but only once.

Interface

Viddy has perhaps the slickest interface of any iPhone social video app. You do see the standard camera icon at bottom center for shooting video, which is flanked by Home, Popular (a flame icon) News (a heart), and Profile buttons. From the home screen of your feed of videos, swiping right-to-left takes you to the People page, where you can Invite Facebook friends and Twitter contacts who haven't used Viddy or follow and view those who have. Swiping left-to-right shows a tiled Explore page, with Featured and trending videos. Another cool use of swipe is that you can use it to fast forward or rewind while playing a video. 

This is a brilliant little touch, and so natural that I'm surprised I've never seen it in another video app. It also means there's no scrubber, and no time indicator, so you don't know how much longer a video will play. But, as mentioned, at most it's going to be 30 seconds. In another great interface touch, the videos play at full screen width, and if you turn the phone on its side, it automatically goes full screen. But oddly, this doesn't apply to movies you shoot within the app, which we'll talk about next. A setting lets you play all videos full-screen in the iPhone's default video player.

Shooting with Viddy

Viddy's built-in video camera interface lets you choose from 15 Instagram-like effect filters before you start shooting. It even uses the Instagram like thumbnails showing you how the effects look across the bottom of the screen. You can turn on the iPhone's camera light and switch to the back-facing camera. But you can't make any changes in these settings once you start shooting. You can, like Vine, start and stop recording by tapping the screen, so there's stop-motion potential here. You can only shoot holding the phone vertically, so if you want widescreen, you shoot with the phone's default camera app and then use that in Viddy.

If you go beyond 30 seconds (the app does allow this), a green line below the preview flashes red. My first couple of attempts were met with "Movie could not be saved to camera roll." A visit to the iPhone Settings Privacy section cleared this up. In Settings, impressively, you can turn on Video Stabilization. When I did this, my video was slightly less jerky, but nothing like you'd get with a Glidecam.

Blinging your Viddies
After shooting, unlike in most of these social video apps, you can do some editing. You can change the brightness to low, medium, or high; you can add background music from an eclectic selection included with the app; and you can trim off the beginning and end of your video. If the video is over 30 seconds, this same tool will automatically trim it to 30 seconds, with a window you can slide to choose which 30 seconds you want. You can also apply or change the effect filter you set before shooting. One thing missing here, which you'll find in Socialcam, is the ability to overlay text titles onto your mini movie.

Sharing your Viddies

When you're done shooting and editing your video, hitting next takes you to the Share page, where you can add a caption, location, hashtags, @friends, and choose from the four social sites you're most likely going to want to share to—Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and Tumblr. You can change the thumbnail image that will be displayed from a choice of 14 points along the video, and choose whether you want the video to be public, private, or just for friends on the Viddy network.

Web Viddy

You can do as much or more on the Web with Viddy than any similar app/service I've tested—certainly way more than you get with Vine. Not only do you see your feed of followeds' videos, you can also explore hot and trending videos on the service and search for new members to follow and view by hashtag search. A big switch lets you choose whether to turn "Social On" or off. With it on, all your activity will be shared to your Facebook or Twitter account. Once viewing a video, you can "heart" it, repost it on your timeline, or share it out to Facebook, Twitter, or Pinterest. A chain icon lets you copy an embed code for adding the video to a blog.

Giddy about Viddy

Vine videos are too short and jerky, Socialcam videos are too long. Viddy strikes a nice balance between the two, while adding more shooting options like attractive Instagram-like effect filters and background music capability. It even lets you edit after you've shot, or use existing clips from your camera roll. To these and a delightful interface, it adds a great web presentation and well-done social capabilities. This Viddy combination is a winning one—winning it our Editors' Choice for iPhone social video apps.

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