(2020-07-08) Mmhmm Turns Your Boring Zoom Call Into A Weekend Updatestyle Tv Show

Mmhmm turns your boring Zoom call into a Weekend Update-style TV show.

The future of video chat will look more like Saturday Night Live’s Weekend Update than it will Zoom. That’s the bet being made by Phil Libin, who led Evernote as CEO during its glory days and has returned to the intersection of consumer and enterprise software with a virtual camera that could reshape video communication

the real power of Mmhmm comes in the way it lets you easily manipulate slides, backgrounds, and your own image — either for fun or for business reasons. With a simple gesture on a trackpad, you can move your face around the screen, shrink or enlarge your image, or disappear completely

The app also allows you to create interactive presentations. A recorded Mmhmm video can be played back as a movie, but the viewer can also click on slides to advance the presentation, toggle the presenter and their audio on and off, or pause the presentation to zoom in on a notable slide.

Libin is among many in Silicon Valley who believe that remote work will prove popular even after the pandemic subsides and that videoconferencing will be the connective tissue between people and companies.

That has created an opening for what Libin calls “personal video presence” — a software-enhanced version of yourself that appears whenever you’re on (web) camera.

As with Evernote, Libin says that Mmhmm will likely adopt a “freemium” business model, offering some features for free and others on a paid tier. He imagines guitar teachers using Mmhmm to play while showing the song’s tablature in a slide; doctors practicing telemedicine with X-rays appearing above their shoulders, and financial planners walking clients through their taxes with the relevant numbers floating nearby.

It’s intended to be the go-to app for “people who want to stream PowerPoint instead of Fortnite,” he says. “Depressingly, there are very many of us.”