Roommates and seniors Sean Thielen and Jonathan Miller created and developed Beet a few months ago. The app is free and open to anyone with an iOS device. An Android version will be released in the coming months.
Miller, a business major, said one of his good friends studied abroad in New ?Zealand last semester and took many short videos on the trip. Miller said he offered to edit them all together, and the result inspired Beet.
“To be honest, college went by in a blink of an eye,” Miller said. “We thought it would be cool to have a way to relive our time in college in a matter of minutes.”
Miller said there are many applications online where people take short video clips and then compile them into one big video, but there was nothing that allowed people to do it in a simplistic way.
He said they chose the name because they liked the idea of capturing the ‘Beet (beat) of your life’ through videos of little everyday ?moments.
“Photos are great at showing what it is you did, but these video moments really bring you back to how you felt during the moments,” Thielen said.
Sophomore photography major Sarah White said she will start using the app as a daily video log of her life.
“Videos are a great way to track and remember the more forgettable moments of life like time goofing off with friends or playing in the snow,” she said. “It’ll be fun to look back at those moments years from now.”
Miller said the app is both very personal and social because it allows users to build and watch the video of their entire life, and their friends and family are able to watch these videos as they add ?to them.
Thielen said though they still have big plans for the future, the responses to the app have been overwhelmingly positive so far.
The app was made available in Apple’s App Store on Feb. 17 and received five-star reviews from almost ?30 reviewers.
Thielen said he is excited to launch the discover functionality, which will allow users to view all the videos tagged at a specific location in chronological order.
He said this feature gives users the opportunity to watch a ‘day in the life’ style video filmed from multiple perspectives from around the world.
Sophomore Isaac Whitfield said he is planning to study abroad in Spain next year and will use the app to share his adventures across the country with his friends and family.
He said Beet will help him express what it was like to live in a place so different from Bloomington.
Miller said they would also like to build a website so users can watch their videos on a larger scale, but the focus is primarily on the app right now.
Miller said he and Thielen have decided to continue work on the app after they graduate because of ?its success.
“We started out with an idea — being able to tell stories through videos — and in developing the application, we refined it into something concrete,” Thielen said.
