App of the Week – Loom
Published on May 29, 2017
If a picture is worth a thousand words, then a video has to be worth a million, right?
Using video is one of the easiest ways to share ideas, collaborate on complex tasks, or break down new concepts online, and it’s rapidly becoming one of the main ways we connect on social media; in fact, video is becoming so prevalent in our online ecosystem that some experts predict that the big social networks – if not the entire internet at large – could well go all-video within our lifetimes.
But for all of the streaming video apps that have flooded the internet, there are still some huge functionality gaps out there. In particular, we’ve often found ourselves frustrated with screensharing online; plenty of apps charge a huge premium for collaborative screenshare capabilities, while the free options can be glitchy and hard to share outside of the chat app itself.
That’s why our team loves Loom, the video recording tool that has forever changed the way we communicate online.
With Loom, a browser extension for Chrome, you can easily record a video at any time, using your front-facing camera and microphone in conjunction with your desktop. Using Loom’s intuitive interface (and easy-to-master keyboard shortcuts), you can start recording at your leisure, and control your editing as you go, pausing and restarting your video at will and capturing only the parts of your screen that you need to share. With Loom’s unlimited recording capabilities, there are absolutely no restrictions on how long or short your video needs to be, and the video quality, in our experience, is leaps and bounds ahead of much of the competition out there.
Once you’ve recorded your video, Loom automatically generates a unique URL that you can easily share with your team, post on social media, or embed just about anywhere on the internet. You can also download your video as an MP4, in case you wanted to edit it in another app.
Our team – particularly our Chief Geek, Jason Finn – has already found countless uses for Loom; it’s great for giving design walkthroughs and feedback, educating new team members on our workflow, and even keeping up to date and coordinating our team’s schedules. Like we said, a video is worth a million words – and you’ll find a million reasons to use Loom every day.
The best part? It’s completely free, and you can add the extension to your Chrome browser in just one click. For more, check out this handy video of Loom in action, and check out some of the glowing feedback the extension has gotten from fans on Twitter.
