“2014 was about selfies … 2015 is for #velfies!”
The term “selfie” was so overused and practised that Oxford Dictionaries announced selfie as their international “Word of the Year” 2013. It was such a popular social media trend that it even spawn accompanying tools such as beautifying/editing apps and the selfie stick. But alas, perhaps its time has come.
Move over selfie, the world is embracing the #velfie aka “video selfie”, with movie stars, idols, artistes, sporting heroes, and even politicians taking and posting videos of themselves online using new mobile apps.
Velfie is a smartphone app similar to Dubsmash where users mime songs or quotes to pre-recorded audio before posting the clips on social networks. Rammohan Sundaram, co-founder of India’s Velfie, which was launched in April, said videos were a more entertaining way for stars to engage with their audiences.
He said its pause-and-play feature and the fact many of the videos are accompanied by subtitles differentiates it from Dubsmash.
The Velfie app, which is free and limits videos to 10 seconds, has been downloaded 200,000 times and is used in around 140 countries.
German-developed Dubsmash, on the other hand, is a mobile app to create short selfie videos dubbed with famous sounds. Its users aka “Dubsmashers” can video-record their dubs and then share it with their friends via other social media platforms. It became a global, viral phenomenon since its launch in November and has been downloaded more than 50 million times across 192 countries.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sJzl2rph-ek
Needless to say, Dubsmash (whether you like it or not) is one of the fastest growing mobile applications worldwide. The best part of it all is that Dubsmash is a free app that’s available for both Android and iOS!
Other apps which you could also download and use to create velfies are such as LINE’s B612 (free app) and Frankly.me, just to name a few. For now 😉
The global (velfie) craze is sweeping the Indian film industry, with stars entertaining loyal fans with dubbed videos which are uploaded to popular sharing platforms Facebook and Instagram. Actors Salman Khan and Ranveer Singh, and actresses Sonakshi Sinha and Richa Chadda are just some of the Bollywood stars to have embraced it, lip-synching everything from Hindi film dialogue to lyrics from Western songs.
In Korea, the craze has taken over the social media platforms of some of your favourite K-Pop idols, including the girls from SNSD Girls’ Generation. You may or may not have seen Tiffany posting up Dubsmash videos and cute video selfies of herself as well as her members in the recent times, leaving SONEs begging for more 😉
https://instagram.com/p/4wIrTtGOPv/
https://instagram.com/p/z6VCQ1mOGi/?taken-by=xolovestephi
Think you can do better? Download any of the video selfie apps above (Velfie, B612, Dubsmash, Frankly.me) and give it a shot!
Source: AFP via The Daily Star.
