I downloaded the app, which quietly went live on Friday, and browsed through the selection. Currently, there’s categories for Top stories, Obama vs. Romney, Awesome debates, Malala, Tech and Fun. Users can swipe through a selection of video clips for each category. The opening video right now is an original clip that sums up some of the complicated math that Obama and Romney need to pull off to win enough electoral votes.

Most of the clips are introduced by a NowThis News host. Some clips from users or outside sources, like a wordless video of post-Sandy gas lines, are just launched with NowThis News branding. Eason Jordan, a former chief news executive at CNN who is now general manager for NowThis News, told me Monday that the app will get eight to 10 original clips added through the day, which is supplemented by an additional 10 to 15 clips. The goal is to get people watching video news again using the tools they turn to most frequently.

“We feel like younger people are not watching traditional TV news, they’re getting video news from mobile and social, and we’re building for that audience,” Jordan said.

The company, which launched in stealth mode in April under the name Planet Daily and has $5 million in funding, will also be releasing an Android app in the coming weeks. Users can also access NowThis News videos through the company’s Facebook and Twitter pages and through a dedicated vertical on BuzzFeed.

Jordan said NowThis News is trying to escape the trap of being boring by encouraging feedback and interactivity. That means users can submit their own videos, comment on current clips and suggest future stories.

I pointed out to Jordan that some of the content is getting a little stale, including old footage from the presidential debates and a look at the fall from space by Felix Baumgartner. He said the content pipeline is just getting cranked up and will produce even more pieces as NowThis News builds out its team, which is currently at 25 people. He believes a diet of 20 to 25 videos a day will satisfy most users.

NowThis News’ focus on news and interactivity may pit it against HuffPost Live, the Huffington Post’s streaming video network that tries to elicit user participation through webcams, smartphones and tablets. Jordan said that he respects HuffPost Live, but the service is a stream of “talking heads,” while NowThis News lets people choose which videos they want to view.

Election day will be an interesting test of whether watching NowThis News is better than just flipping channels, picking off videos from a user’s social stream or turning to any of the social video apps available.

But New York City startup GorillaSpot Media has created a new mobile video app called Cliptamatic that looks to combine some of the short communications and sharing of Twitter with branded premium video like Hulu. The goal is to make concise premium video a kind of language that inspires reactions and gets people talking. The app, available for the iPhone, will start with a limited selection of election news, sports and comedy clips, usually no more than 30 seconds long, but will soon expand to movies and TV content.

Here’s how it works: users can choose to follow sports clips from the Big Ten Network to start, subscribing to their favorite conference team’s channel or they can choose from a variety of 2012 election issues, which includes curated content selected by GorillaSpot. There’s also comedy content from Latham Entertainment, which owns the Kings of Comedy and other properties and provides channels for Bernie Mac, George Lopez, Steve Harvey and other comedians. When new clips become available, users get alerted based on their subscriptions. They can also follow other users and see what they’re sharing or find what’s popular in the Cliptamatic network.

When a user finds a video they like, they can easily share it out to Facebook or the Cliptamatic feed with their own caption. The videos will run inside Facebook. Twitter integration is coming soon.

Cliptamatic has limited utility at launch because of its smaller library of content. And if it stays this small, it’s not going to be very useful for people. But there’s reason to believe this can be a more widely used tool because of GorillaSpot’s experience in the premium video world. GorillaSpot, for the last five years, has worked with studios and TV networks, such as Paramount, ABC, CBS, MTV, HBO, AMC, MLB and others, for its products, which include SceneWeaver, a video mashup application, and ReelCards, which provides online premium video e-cards. The company plans on rolling out film and TV content in the coming weeks and months, with many TV clips uploaded within minutes of their airing.

Athan Stephanopoulos, CEO & Founder of GorillaSpot told me GorillaSpot has already done a lot of heavy lifting with content owners and shown them how they can monetize their clips in a safe way. Now, he believes many more will be interested in teaming up on Cliptamatic. Some TV networks may release clips, with short 3-second post rolls that promote a current show. Other movie studios may just want to point to their archive of content. And some media companies may just want to get in now to help build Cliptamatic up into a larger sharing platform.

Stephanopoulos believes that there’s a ripe opportunity in creating a social video sharing service that is built specifically with mobile in mind, so consumption and distribution is easy. And he said premium content is capable of expressing people’s feelings in ways that user-generated content can’t convey.

“We’re trying to create a simple experience for finding content that’s relevant to you that helps you elevate your social conversation,” Stephanopoulos said. “Hulu is like a full meal while YouTube is like an appetizer, but we’re trying to provide the best bite of a meal.”

I think there’s definitely a place for Cliptamatic if it can score the right content. Video is a great conversation starter and tool for expression but I hesitate to use it sometimes because a clip may be too long or I can’t find the right video. And doing it from a mobile device makes it even harder. But if I could find the perfect Will Farrell quote from Anchorman or an illuminating clip from the upcoming debates that, I would love to share it at the right time. Movieclips has some great clips, which are available through YouTube as well, but they’re often a couple minutes long or more and there’s no mobile app.

We’re already used to sharing longer videos on Twitter and Facebook but I think we could see a lot more of that if the content was better packaged for quick sharing. And with the popularity of gifs these days, we’re understanding how short video moments are becoming a form of expression.

Many simply come home and leave OoVoo on in the background as they do homework or watch TV, sort of like an instant messager app. Friends jump on or jump off, checking in with each other and seeing what’s going on. The person who starts the video chats isn’t obligated to stay on. This is not appointment video: it’s ambient video, running in the background.

Video tells the story

That got me thinking about the evolution video. It’s similar in some sense to how pictures have undergone a transformation. We used to take pictures to preserve memories, using precious film to capture significant moments. But with advent of digital cameras and later mobile phones with cameras, pictures became akin to a casual form of communication, giving rise to services like Instagram and others.

Video chatting and broadcasting is also evolving in a similar manner. We used to think about scheduling Skype chats and video conferences.  Uploading a video to YouTube meant you often edited the video or at least reviewed it. But now, we’re seeing that video is becoming this casual, immediate medium that doesn’t have to convey anything special.

Cheaper broadband+free video services

Jackman believes the rise of ambient video is due to cheaper broadband and the growth of free services that allow users to use video with little regard to cost. The fact that video chatting can increasingly be multiparty also lends itself to this idea of video as an emerging background layer to life.

Google is seeing more people leave Google Hangouts on for long periods of time, according to Iska Hain, a company spokeswoman.

“We definitely see that use case, especially at Google where colleagues will jump into a Hangout from remote offices and we all do work together. Sometimes people do like to just ‘be around’ other people. There are cases of folks turning a hangout on while they go about cooking or knitting or painting,” Hain said.

Foursquare has set up a big screen video portal inside both of its New York and San Francisco offices that are constantly on, allowing people to see each other and organize impromptu meetings.

“I can just go up to the screen and shout someone’s name and they’ll come to the portal,” said Benjy Weinberger, Foursquare’s San Francisco engineering lead.  

Increasingly comfortable with live-sharing

It’s not just with video conferencing. People are increasingly more casual with video sharing as well. I was reminded of this when talking to Bill Nguyen, the co-founder of Color. Color, as we wrote recently, has signed a deal with Verizon to put its live video-sharing app on Verizon phones. The app allows users to start recording a video and alerts their friends that a live broadcast has started.

When I first heard about that, I wasn’t comfortable with the idea of sending out video before having the option to edit it. I don’t have any idea what’s going to happen at the end of that clip. But that’s where things are going. We’ve seen that with other live-streaming services: people are increasingly comfortable broadcasting their lives and letting the world see whatever happens.

Gil Eyal, vice president of marketing for Mobli, a mobile photo and video sharing service, said increasingly people are just uploading videos directly to the service without editing out mistakes or taking a look again at what they’re showing.

“We’re seeing more spontaneous video, it’s all raw and unedited,” said Eyal. “It’s just people being real and video becoming this common language.”

Not everyone is ready for this kind of spontaneous, always-on video world. But it’s a natural extension of the trends were seeing in technology and social media. The barriers separating the private and the public are crumbling thanks to social and technological tools that make it easy to share. The same ideas at work behind Facebook, Foursquare and Instagram, will also spur people to be more open and free with video.

Image courtesy of Shutterstock user Tyler Olsen.