TokBox Raises $4M from Sequoia; Om Gets Spammed

Free video chat startup TokBox announced today it had raised $4 million in Series A funding from Sequoia Capital and angel investors including the founders of YouTube, Stanford professor Rajeev Motwani, Slide VP Keith Rabois, and Cisco VP Tony Bates. The pedigree definitely commands a second glance.

However, our boss Om writes on GigaOM,

I have been spammed non-stop this morning: 157 messages so far, all because a close friend signed up with Tokbox and wanted to share it with me. No thank you, friend! For the sake of our friendship, please don’t share untried services with me. I am really not in the mood to be a guinea pig this Monday morning.

The New York Times today also played up TokBox’s lineage while noting issues with its service.

In tests, TokBox chats looked a little grainier, and its audio sounded a little noisier, than video chats under similar conditions on Skype. The TokBox founders say this discrepancy will disappear as the service evolves out of its testing phase. And with the coming release of Adobe’s Flash Player 9 video software, which will elevate the quality of all Flash video online, video chats on TokBox will be “crystal clear,” Mr. Hose said.