
“We’re smart about knowing when you’ve watched a P olo and cleaning it up,” said Bortnik. “In terms of low connectivity, we have to build for that and figure out if there’s a delay from the sender to the receiver and say the detection is bad,” said Bortnik.Īs video messages, called P olos, are also retained on their servers, Marco Polo constantly clears up storage on user devices.
MARCOPOLO CHAT DOWNLOAD
One trick is to detect when an end-user is on Wi-Fi so, when possible, Marco Polo can download video messages ahead of time to reduce playback friction. “That involves a lot of tricky moves - doing things that are absolutely needed to get the Marco Polo across.” Through software, Bortnik takes on the challenge of optimizing connectivity to ensure Marco Polo works well even when cellular or Wi-Fi signals are poor, and “especially for those sensitive to data usage,” said Bortnik.

MARCOPOLO CHAT SOFTWARE
That makes it particularly important for Marco Polo to differentiate through its software while taking advantage of ready-to-scale cloud computing. So being able to connect outside of Wi-Fi is becoming more possible,” said Bortnik.Ĭheaper data made it easier for Marco Polo to enter the race, but the gates have been opened for all players in the market. Over the years, it’s gotten cheaper and cheaper and cheaper. “When we first started, data was super expensive. Of the cloud’s many perks is cheaper data, as virtualized infrastructure trends drive down overhead for cloud-native startups. “There wasn’t anything we could buy off the shelf,” said Bortnik, noting that at the time, building such tech was quite difficult but a game-changing necessity for the current success of the app. Marco Polo’s ability to watch video live or at a later time is tech the team built in-house. Marco Polo’s first challenge was merely building the application, as typical video communication services provide primarily synchronous video file exchanges. In the cloud era, scaling a tech business has its share of challenges and perks.
MARCOPOLO CHAT CODE
Now surpassing 1.3 million iOS user reviews (the company has yet to reveal user numbers but claims it’s significantly more than this), Marco Polo’s organic growth has brought Bortnik to the inevitable junction of scaling her business, from code to compensation.

The lengthy incubation period has enabled Bortnik to focus company resources on the app’s underlying technology for uninterrupted video exchanges. Launched three years ago with multiple iterations, Marco Polo has reaped the benefits of $25 million in funding. With a founding team of two engineers, Vlada and her husband Michal, Marco Polo has been an exercise in faith for the creators and investors. If only that were a feature in real life. There’s even a “mom-mode,” where busy users can breeze through rambling video messages at double speed. It’s built for candid colloquy between familiar faces, stripped down to the necessities of genuine exchanges instead of filter-fueled clickbait. Translation: Marco Polo is “real” because it’s private, focusing on one-to-one video conversations or private groups. “When people get Marco Polo and see what’s possible, there’s an emotional light bulb of being able to connect in a way that’s real, not a highlights reel,” she added in a reference to the algorithm-driven standard for curating what users get to see in their news feeds on popular apps, such as Instagram and Facebook, and even Snapchat, for a time. “There are plenty of apps to keep in touch, but those are mostly about optimizing for the quantity of relationships, not the quality,” said Joya co-founder Vlada Bortnik. With just a handful of minimal image- and voice-augmenting features, the interface is devoid of animated overlays, remaining uncluttered and intuitive enough for my toddler. hit the mark with its flagship app, Marco Polo, a video chat platform that lets you record messages to be watched in real-time or at one’s convenience. In a world of endless social media platforms, how does a video chat app stand out? Skip the gimmicks and focus on the technology to ensure authentic, real-time reactions.Īfter years of mobile app launches, Joya Communications Inc.
