Amazon to allow you easily share clips from its Prime Video content

Amazon has announced that it will allow you to easily share video clips showing up to 30 seconds of part of your Prime Video content, directly from your iPhone app. The feature will only be available for a very limited number of shows initially, but allowing users to share show videos is a very different attitude than some other streaming providers show.

According to Amazon's press release, its video-sharing feature will be available on iOS devices. When you're watching a show, the Share Clip button will appear along with the rest of its controls. Tapping it will create a 30-second video clip, which you can then adjust to make sure it contains the part of the show you are trying to share. From there, you can share it using Apple's built-in sharing feature, sending it to a friend via iMessage, or posting it on social media.

When asked if the feature will be available on Android, an Amazon spokesperson told The Verge that clip sharing is currently only available to iPhone users running version 8.41 (or later) of the Prime Video app.

It seems like an obvious feature any streaming service should add - people really like to share clips from the shows they're watching, and doing so is basically free marketing for that show. However, Amazon's competitors like Hulu and Netflix are going in the opposite direction: When you take a screenshot while watching one of their shows, the content of the video ends up black, leaving you with only the subtitles if you have them turned on.

While this is perhaps an understandable tactic for third-party content (Netflix's download feature also has some limitations on the shows you can download), for original shows created by the streaming services themselves, it feels like a missed opportunity. to allow people to do marketing for them.

Amazon says you can only share clips from The Wilds, Invincible, Fairfax, and the first season of The Boys to get started, but will add more movies and shows later. It's unclear if we'll end up getting this feature for any non-Amazon content on Prime Video in the future.