Is Viddy the new Twitter of mobile social video?

‘If you don’t have an iPhone, well…you don’t have an iPhone’, the Apple iPhone 4 ad mocks. You can’t argue with that. Yet with smartphone ownership now so prevalent (100 million iPhones have now been sold globally), it’s not apparent who the slightly smug voiceover is actually talking to.

But how many smartphone owners are using their devices to share viral video? If stats about Viddy are anything to go by, the correct answer is ‘a growing number’.

Viddy, a social video app that allows people to apply filters and effects to short video clips shot on their iPhones, is doing rather well. Just six weeks after launching it boasts 500,000 downloads – a fairly major milestone to hit within such a short timeframe.

If social video sharing in the mobile space really does catch on, the potential to get up close and personal through viral is pretty thrilling.

Take hipster rockers Panic at the Disco as an example. The band recently asked fans to download Viddy to help create the video for its new single, “Ready to Go”.

Mobile video also presents itself as an ideal complementary medium for crowdsourcing, which is being used by major brands, Peugeot included, to inspire creativity and among consumers. This tends to work particularly well when supported by Facebook marketing activity.

It remains to be seen whether initial interest in Viddy necessarily marks a major trend towards mobile social video. In the meantime, however, expect to see a few more innovative viral video campaigns as bands and brands alike jump on the social video bandwagon.