Subscribe to the daily newsletter.

Husband and wife team launch video app to disrupt “linear” social news feeds

img4289

A Manchester start-up has launched a new platform for discovering viral videos using artificial intelligence and cloud-based technology.

Wattl, a free-to-download app, is aiming to turn the traditional way users interact with social media on its head by replacing the linear content feeds used by the likes of Facebook and Instagram with a scrollable, interactive grid.

Videos play simultaneously, and in real-time. Users pinch, scroll and drag the grid to navigate the content, zooming in or out, to view individual clips and images.

The platform’s innovative algorithm ranks and displays videos based on a proprietary blend of user engagement, genre and age. 

Subscribe to the Prolific North Daily Newsletter Today!

Want all the latest content from Prolific North delivered direct to your inbox daily? Of course you do!

Watch more about Wattl


Husband and wife co-founders, Emma and Matthew Ryan, have previously developed apps and platforms for a number of global brands, including the BBC and Universal Pictures.

Based at Manchester Science Partnerships’ (MSP) Bright Building, the pair have been developing Wattl within Mi-IDEA, the innovation center, which MSP and Cisco launched in partnership last September.

CEO Emma said: “The traditional newsfeed is dying out. Users increasingly want innovative ways to access content, on their own terms and without restriction.

“With so much content being uploaded daily it’s becoming harder and harder to find relevant and engaging videos. Wattl provides a bird’s eye overview of the web’s most interesting clips and pictures, keeping you ahead of the curve by showing you what’s popular each day, and removing old content.”

CTO Matthew added: “Wattl is an exciting technical challenge that we’ve loved working on. We have an international patent pending on the video platform and we are using the very latest cloud and AI technologies.”

Download the app here.

Related News