Travel back in time with Rwnd, a Vine-like app where all the videos play backwards

With the advent of social media, one medium we’ve been seeing more and more of are video sharing platforms. Most of the major names in social networking have two things in common, mobile and video. However, for the most part, these apps do essentially the same thing. Apps like Snapchat, Instagram, and Vine let you record videos directly on your phone and share them with your friends. For a market as saturated at this, do we really need another video sharing application?

Andrew Cunningham, founder of Australia-made Rwnd, seems to think so. The premise of Rwnd is simple, it wants to put the fun back in video sharing, as Andrew puts it “we just felt that things were all getting too complex, too busy. We wanted to make something simple just to have fun again.” The app allows you to take a short video of four seconds in length, upload it to the app and play it back in reverse. Users also have the option of sharing the video on social media as well as embedding it on their websites. Here’s one:

It’s also possible to save videos for later, which makes it easier for those who love playing back videos and showing them to their friends, without having to worry about a stable internet connection.

“We spent three years building a big serious video app, but we wanted to take a break and do something fun,” he says. The same startup also created the live video sharing app Zarfo.

Rwnd is built on the idea that in today’s generation, people’s attention spans are getting shorter and shorter. By keeping it at four seconds per video, people can watch multiple videos in quick succession at the bus stop or walking to class. If you’ve used Twitter, Vine or Instagram, then you will be accustomed to navigating the app. Users can follow their favourite accounts, take a look at trending loops, and see what’s new.

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The app has been on the iOS App Store for about two weeks, but has already gained some traction in the form of 1.4 million videos viewed, with half of all their installs coming from China and Japan. The app has also acquired some well known users in the social media world, such as Robert Scoble and Chris Voss.

For now, Rwnd isn’t as concerned with monetization as they are in building a platform and attracting users. However, they do have some ideas on how to monetize the app. Mainly, Andrew believes having “boring images in your newsfeed” isn’t the path they would like to take. Instead, ads could come in the way of brands making their own Rwnd videos that users will enjoy, similar to the strategy Snapchat is said to be working on.

Rwnd is free on the iOS App Store.