AVOS Systems, the company founded by YouTube founders Chad Hurley and Steve Chen, has just launched a new app that appears to be a Chinese version of Twitter’s popular six-second video-sharing app, Vine. I hate to use the word clone, but… clone.
The app is called Wan-Pai, (or Wanpai, we’re not really sure due to complexities in the translation from Mandarin) which seems to mean “Beat” based on the various translations Google is giving me. (It could also mean Play Racket, Play Shoot, or “to play Mahjong”.) The app lets you record video in the same manner as Vine, by holding a finger to the screen to record, and letting go to pause.
Here’s the official wording from the site (as translated by Google):
Press and hold anywhere on the screen to start shooting, let go pause, then press and hold to continue shooting, it’s that simple. Shooting clips simultaneously, easy magic effect!
It gets even more intense with the ability to add filters, choose to include or mute audio, and decide the direction the video will play in (forward only, backward only, or in a forward and backward loop).
The camera itself is very similar to Vine, boxing off the camera window against a grey background, and showing your progress bar (on the top instead of the bottom, but still). And the most offensive rip-off would be the six second limit, which is present on both apps (even if a 16-year old can get around it).
The content stream is also very Vine-like, except for the salmon theme color instead of Vine green. It shows an Instagram-style vertical feed of one clip after the other. Unlike Vine, users must tap each clip to get it to play, but things like comments and likes are all in the same place.
In fact, the animations (such as the clip floating under the user name and avatar bar) are even similar. Wan-pai, which is available for both iOS and Android, also lets you share to various social networks, Sina microblogging, or email clips from the feed to your friends.
You can check out the Wan-Pai app here.
This one is just for fun: