A few years ago, we embarked on a mission to transform how online video was created and delivered. I was running a video production company and my co-founder was a video game designer. We had a realization – the standard online video of the day was completely missing the point. After all, what is the internet great at? Interactivity, user-navigation, and personal relevance. Were our videos doing anything to harness that? Absolutely not.
So we set out to create an interactive series that empowered the viewer with choice. We wanted an online video experience that was engaging, actionable, and fun, and while we could write the script and coordinate the gaming aspect in no time, there was no easy way to build or publish this experience online, and there was certainly no chance of scaling it to produce multiple episodes over time.
Remarkably, video technology had not kept up with the rest of the web and our new direction became clear – rather than build one project that inspired some, we needed to build a platform to inspire millions, a platform to empower people around the world to create these kinds of rich, immersive online video experiences at scale without the pain, timeline, or expense of custom one-off projects. Thus we created FlixMaster and it quickly became the essential online video platform for indie producers and enterprise creatives who want audiences not only to watch but also to interact.
And the producers produced - thousands of hours of footage woven together into interactive projects across the web. Shop-able videos, product demos, entertainment, customer support videos, educational content, you name it. And as top-tier brands and enterprises took our platform and pushed the boundaries of what’s possible, our vision and our mission expanded.
NBC Universal launched webisodes that leveraged our player API to assign points to fans based on their choices in the Covert Affairs online prequel series Sights Unseen. Cinemax launched an unprecedented 24 interactive videos in one microsite that told the backstory of their new original series Banshee. And most recently Philips, in conjunction with Ogilvy, and Maybelline New York, in conjunction with ICED Media, have launched first-of-their-kind clickable video marketing campaigns that are viewable through the browser of most mobile devices without the need to download any app (including iPhone!). Partnering with the talented people behind these initiatives has been incredible, so we’ve doubled-down and made our platform more robust, more powerful and even more remarkable.
And we’ve chosen to celebrate that expansion with a new look and name that truly represent our vision and the captivating way our platform is fundamentally changing the online media experience.
FlixMaster is now Rapt Media. Welcome to the evolution of online video.
