Rounds and Vidyo Inc. today announced a strategic agreement to integrate Vidyo’s award-winning technology into the Rounds platform. The Vidyo-integrated Rounds solution will be platform-agnostic, combining shared entertainment with multi-party HD video conferencing, mass scaling capabilities, and the market’s best video quality. The integration will allow Rounds to offer a next-level video experience that brings real life social interactions back online – an exciting addition to the social communication market.
“To achieve a truly engaging real-time social experience, there needs to be a balanced mix between the worlds of entertainment and communication,” said Rounds Co-Founder and CEO, Dany Fishel. “That’s Rounds – a fun, engaging experience that mimics real life interactions by merging interactive content, games, activities and real-time video communication. This strategic agreement with Vidyo now provides Rounds with the best infrastructure possible to deliver a unique, unparalleled social video communication experience. We believe this will significantly further our position as a leader in social video chat.”
“The impressive experience that Rounds has created is an exciting offering for consumers to create and share memories together,” said Ofer Shapiro, CEO and Co-Founder, Vidyo. “The integration of the VidyoWorks™ platform is yet another example of how Vidyo’s technology can easily be used by application developers to deliver high quality video experiences that scale to the masses. We believe this will support further growth of the Rounds platform.”
The Rounds cross platform solution, available on iOS, Android et sur le Web, delivers a unique experience that is based on the power of real-time visual interaction and communication bringing users closer together through shared emotional experiences. The addition of Vidyo’s high-quality visual communication platform, VidyoWorks, based on Scalable Video Coding (SVC) technology, is expected to take the Rounds platform to the next level, expanding the reach, fidelity and capabilities of the Rounds application. Users can look forward to experiencing reliable, high-quality video communications that can be accessed via any IP network and from any device.
Vidyo's recent announcement to develop an SVC extension within WebRTC should be of particular interest to Rounds users and development community. With Vidyo’s SVC extension within WebRTC, Rounds will be able to provide a non-downloadable environment for their customers on the Web.
This Strategic agreement with Vidyo, follows an additional investment that was closed by Rounds earlier this year led by Verizon Ventures, Tim Draper from DFJ and Rhodium, bringing its total investment to $10.5M.
According to Fishel, “The new Vidyo-enhanced integration fits perfectly with Rounds’ vision and product evolution roadmap. The upcoming re-launch of Rounds’ mobile apps will also include Vidyo’s technology as well as some exciting new capabilities that are expected to be available in the near future. Rounds continues to join with new content partners to offer greater shared experiences in its solution. Part of these experiences is created using its easy to use API, which allows developers to create synchronized HTML5 real-time activities between users in a live, video chat environment.” For a preview of the future of Rounds mobile:http://vimeo.com/78240053.
About Rounds
Rounds combines online entertainment with video communication to bring users closer together for a fun, live experience across social networks, operating systems and devices. Bridging the offline and online worlds, Rounds users share activities, games and videos with their friends, giving the feeling of hanging out in real life. Rounds has raised a total of $10.5 million in funding from industry leading investors, including Verizon Ventures, Rhodium, DFJ’s Tim Draper, and other private investors. Download the Rounds application and get more information at www.rounds.com.
