Animoto Receives Funding from Amazon: The Animoto.com website, launched in August 2007, currently has over 160,000 registered users and over 7.5% of those users have paid for premium services. They have just announced that they have received funding from Amazon. The terms were not disclosed.

Animoto is a web application that lets users create professional-quality videos from their own photos and music. Using Cinematic AI technology, Animoto thinks like a director and editor and uses the same post-production techniques used in TV & film to create one-of-a-kind, dynamic videos.

The Animoto Facebook application has quickly become one of the most popular photo sharing applications on the social network with over 750,000 users.

I was speaking with Animoto CEO on Monday about how well the application has been doing since it’s launch just a short time ago. “In our first eight months, we’ve helped make photo sharing fun again,” said Brad Jefferson, CEO & Co-founder. “Now we’re ready to accelerate our team growth and product development to establish Animoto as the ubiquitous rendering platform for generating high-production value video from images and music. We are delighted to find in Amazon.com an investor who believes in our vision.”

Jefferson also shared that they will be turning Animoto from a website into a platform. The facebook application was the first instance of an application being built off of the API. The API will be private and most likely at a premium.

Animoto’s Facebook application is the first of many offerings that leverages the Animoto platform. Released in March 2008, the Animoto Videos Facebook application has quickly become one of the most popular applications on Facebook with over 750,000 users. To accommodate its dramatic growth, Animoto has relied on Amazon Web Services for all of its’ technical infrastructure needs.

“Animoto has a very smart team with an innovative approach to helping people create personalized, high production videos for the web,” said Jeff Blackburn, Senior Vice President for Business Development, Amazon.com. “As a customer of our Amazon Web Services business, Animoto shared with us the success they’ve had recently with their Facebook application, and we think this is just the beginning.”

While it’s free for Animoto users to create 30 second Animoto videos, the company currently earns revenue by offering premium services which allow users to create extended-length Animoto videos and download their Animoto videos in MP4 format.

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