Who says social media technology and video functionality don't fit into the 3D CAD domain? In yet an another acquisition that might leave some diehard CAD aficionados scratching their heads, Autodesk is plunking down $60 million to acquire a small company I bet a lot of Design News' readers never knew existed: Socialcam, which provides a popular mobile app and Web-based service that lets users capture, edit, and share video.
What does a consumer video sharing service have to do with hard-core professional engineering? Autodesk officials say video can enhance the communication around design, particularly in a social, collaborative medium.
"Video is a powerful tool for storytelling and one that we believe can be more widely applied across the design and engineering workflow," Samir Hanna, vice president of the Autodesk Consumer Group, told us in an email exchange about the acquisition. "These are collaborative processes that require communication at every stage, from concept through to production."
With Socialcam, Hanna said, users can share videos in real-time from anywhere -- a capability lending itself to scenarios where engineers take video into the field and share it with key stakeholders to illustrate design changes or to document certain milestones.
The Socialcam smartphone app and Web-based service makes it easy to capture, edit, and share videos. (Source: Socialcam)
The Socialcam deal is Autodesk's latest move to flesh out its consumer-oriented design and content creation portfolio. It has been slowly laying down a technology foundation to accommodate do-it-yourselfers and support what it and many in the industry are calling "personal manufacturing." (See: 3D Modeling & Printing for 'Personal Manufacturing'.)
Specifically, Autodesk has released its Autodesk 123D family, including 123D Catch and 123 Make, to let anyone (not just would-be engineers) design and output original creations. There is also SketchBook, an online consumer drawing and paint service. Other acquisitions in this space have included the online photo editor Pixlr and the how-to site Instructables, where people swap ideas and methods for building things.
"Now with Socialcam, we will be able to bring video into that mix so that everyone has access to a range of creative tools so they can tell their story," Hanna told us.
Autodesk isn't the only 3D CAD company to dive into social media waters. We reported in April on Dassault Systemes buying NetVibes, a provider of what it calls sentiment analytics technology. NetVibes is being melded into Dassault's next-generation 3D Experience strategy, which will help companies capture what customers are saying and thinking about their products as part of the early design and requirement-gathering stage of product development.
Autodesk officials said it plans to invest in scaling the Socialcam platform, developing a more comprehensive set of tools for its users, and leveraging the technology to make its professional film and video content creation tools accessible to a broader audience. The Socialcam transaction is expected to close this quarter.
Agreed... I think that they will tweak the company's presence/apps to match their market targets. This move may just be a short-cut into the capability, as opposed to creating a video sharing service from scratch.
On the other hand, social media is absolutely evolving. I have started wondering if the FB IPO wasn't tied to a perceived (or actually tracked) slowdown in usage. Most things that are computer related are subject to rapid upgrades and replacement is seems.
SM per se may indeed be around for a long time, but any single company could change usage policies or go away very quickly. This move gives AutoDesk a level of control over its own destiny in this specific area.
Once AD, has developed a effective pipeline for an all-inclusive insertion of the Auto-Cap feature they will be more effective in the develpement of their exisiting and future product develpement, as a Sr. Network Automation Test Engineer, I have seen many a product like this be purchased from a name brand company only to be shelfed, and in this case I think that AD will use the product if not in their existing product line, as a revamp, or use it in future product releases, I also agree with others in this post that FB, TW, and others are on surface glue, if you really look at the product that Google offers, you can see that they in their mad dash for product acquistion is growing as well, like their purchase of the Nortel telcom patents, that give us google voice, and combined chat, overall this is a good purchase for AD.
Beth Stackpole : I really like the collabartive part of this. It all makes sense. I was into MEP design for awhile and it would be nice to show people what you mean. It would also be nice to capture video of a site before you go back to the office. We used to have to measure and draw most stuff on site....this is just so must better.
Beth Stackpole : Now about the social media aspect. You sure had a lot to say. I agree with ...well...I think about all of it. I do not like facebook for work purposes at all. I do think that there can be "social" media for companies that work together to share files and such. I believe that can be a great thing....if done correctly and securely. Some people have problems sharing files on the network at work, but they can share photos with the world with facebook or Flickr. This need to change. Either people need to get smarter...which won't happen, or incorporate some of these things into the corporate file sharing schema. Make it easier for people to share their ideas. I hate FB, but people can use it. So make it as easy as it is to share photos on FB as it is to share files(securely) with your colleagues. That's my 2 cents on it.
@Cadman-LT: Absolutely on target--you and no one else is going to upload CAD designs to FB or LinkedIn or any of those other public platforms to share models or collaborate with peers. But if there were systems that incorporated some of those social capabilities within the boundaries of traditional design tools and traditional networks (i.e., with security), it would open up doors to new kinds of knowledge sharing and collaboration. I'm not saying any of the existing tools are "the one," but we're inching closer.
Laura Sapiens' Ego! Smartmouse offers users a unique interactive experience by providing 2D and 3D connectivity, hardware identity authentication, data storage, and more.
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