
Can’t Wait (YC S11) is a mobile social network for movie trailers - canistr
http://techcrunch.com/2011/08/19/yc-backed-cant-wait-is-a-mobile-social-network-for-movie-trailers/
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MatthewB
Is it just me or are a lot of the recent YC companies extremely niche, almost
where they could just be a feature of another website? Maybe I'm just in a
negative mood today.

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paul
AirBnb started out as a site for renting airbeds and now they're worth over a
billion dollars, so I'm not too worried.

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olivercameron
Can't Wait! is awesome. Movie trailers are actually perfectly sized bits of
content to be consumed when you're bored, it also happens to one of the few
bits of content I love to see my friends recommend.

The app is really well put together too, I've gotten used to apps scrolling
tons of images to be rather bad performing, but Can't Wait! scrolls like a
champ.

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timthorn
Am I alone in trying to avoid trailers? I find they tend to give away too much
of the story, and always contain the best special effects from the film. I
want to be surprised by the movies I see, and trailers act against that.

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megablast
I am sure you are not alone, but there are a significant number of people who
enjoy trailers, possible the majority. Trailers can be more entertaining than
most films they portray.

So what do you go when you see a film, come in 20 mins late?

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zavulon
This is a really bad title on TC. Reading that title made me think "Oh God,
not another useless social network!". But then I read the article and realized
it's an iPhone app that's actually very useful.

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d0m
Seriously, it's the kind of app that make you say "Crap, this is so simple..
but so useful; I wish I had thought of that".

There are several other apps that aim to make sharing movies/songs/<name-it>
easier.. but starting with movie trailers is a great start.

Good luck, have fun!

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ericflo
Thanks for all the feedback, everyone! We're happy to answer any questions you
have in this thread--ask away. We're very excited to show what we've been
working on, and we can't wait (sorry) to show you all where we're headed in
the future.

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sriramk
How do you guys get access to the trailers? Does that involve some licensing
or are they freely available?

Very nifty app btw - congratulations.

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ericflo
All of our trailers are actually being streamed from YouTube. We're using the
YouTube API on the website to build a nice HTML5 player, and then in the app,
HTML5 plays using the native player.

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justincormack
I always assumed you could not do that as the terms of service say

You agree not to distribute in any medium any part of the Service or the
Content without YouTube's prior written authorization, unless YouTube makes
available the means for such distribution through functionality offered by the
Service (such as the Embeddable Player).

Am I mistaken?

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ericflo
We're just using the embeddable player (the iframe version of it) which
automatically uses Flash on the web and HTML 5 <video> on iOS
[http://code.google.com/apis/youtube/iframe_api_reference.htm...](http://code.google.com/apis/youtube/iframe_api_reference.html)

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jazzychad
Congrats on the launch! I've been using the beta for a while and been really
impressed. I had an eerily similar idea several months back but never executed
on it. I'm so happy to see it come to life. Good luck, Erics!

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siong1987
So, does this mean that both of them will stop working on convore? Or, convore
will be discountinued?

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ericflo
Eric and I left Convore a few months ago to start working on Can'tWait!, and
Leah is staying with Convore Inc to continue building out that company.

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lyime
I used to watch movie trailers on trailer.apple.com but I had no idea which of
my friends were interested in the same movies. I have been using Can't Wait
beta for a few weeks now and its's fun to use. Good way for me to kill some
time on transit.

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brianstorms
How does MovieClips.com feel about CantWait's use of the trailers it has
licensed and posted on YouTube?

For instance, here's CantWait's "Midnight in Paris" page on its website:

<http://cantwa.it/movie/midnight-in-paris/first-trailer-117/>

The YouTube movie that is embedded on that page is:

[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U_3gIxrcWK8&feature=playe...](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U_3gIxrcWK8&feature=player_embedded)

Which happens to be posted by MovieClips.com, a company that pays the studios
to license their trailer data. Is CantWait paying MovieClips.com? Does it pay
YouTube? Does it pay the rights holders of the trailers?

Here's another example, CantWait's "Spider Man" trailer:
[http://cantwa.it/movie/the-amazing-spider-man/first-
teaser-6...](http://cantwa.it/movie/the-amazing-spider-man/first-teaser-6/)

It was posted by Sony Pictures on YouTube:
[http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=u...](http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=upwf8RsyNqQ)

Is Sony Pictures cool with CantWait's use of its trailer within a commercial
app and website?

I am curious if CantWait is at all concerned about being shut down for
commercial redistribution of content from YouTube? Or is CantWait paying
YouTube for the content and its bandwidth? What if CantWait scales and YouTube
says, enough is enough?

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nibo
Really cool as I am addicted to trailers. I would also add a piece to their
business model. They could let you browse old movies trailers as well (I would
watch them!) and let you rent the movie from Netflix, taking a percentage.
What do you think?

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zeeg
Netflix doesnt charge per rental, the most that they could do is an affiliate
signup with the company.

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Urgo
Hah this is funny. I was sitting in the theater this past week hoping there
was an app just like this that I could get reminders for trailers I see that I
want to make sure I catch the full movie when it comes out. Just wish the
android version was out....

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finin
Trailers make every movie look good, even the ones that turn out to be truly
awful. :-/

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josephmosby
Having "The Social Network" be the first trailer would be awesomely meta.

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andrew_null
congrats on the launch Eric and eric!

