Written by Liz Gannes
Posted Friday, October 19, 2007 at 12:00 AM PT

 

Veeker Raises Funding, Cuts Deal with NBC

Veeker, a mobile video and picture messaging startup, is climbing back into the game with a revamped product and fresh customers. The company aims to make it easy for you to show your friends and family what you’re doing from wherever you and your cameraphone happen to be.

San Francisco-based Veeker, which launched about a year ago, raised a Series A round from Labrador Ventures earlier this year, bringing its total funding to “less than $2.5 million,” according to CEO Alex Kelly. I haven’t seen this reported elsewhere, but the Labrador site makes mention of a $320,000 investment in Veeker from this March. Kelly said Veeker is seeking addition funding now.

After some soul-searching about why nobody seemed to be adopting its product, Veeker changed things around, most importantly relaxing its registration requirements so people don’t have to be logged in to view content and adding uploads from a webcam or email in addition to a phone. It also offers a web-based widget people can use to show off their latest pictures and videos. The revamp was released last month.

Veeker is doing the smart thing and finding other people to push its product, most notably NBC. After a test run helping local channel NBC11 with citizen journalism and viewer participation by enabling cameraphone uploads and text messages, NBC signed an exclusive deal about a month and a half ago to roll Veeker’s service out to 10 major cities, according to Kelly. Jan Boyd, executive producer of new media at NBC11, testified over email, “Their product is great. It actually works!”

When you think about it, “actually working” is all you really want from a product like Veeker’s. In a demo at Veeker’s office this week, I was impressed by how fast files flew around — from webcam to my phone in seconds — but it also struck me that I’d have to do a bit of learning to know how to send what where. As more and more people buy into MMS plans, this kind of on-the-spot sharing could really have mainstream appeal.

Meanwhile, though, there are a lot of services out there that help you send whatever multimedia can capture on your phone to an audience. For instance, kyte.tv, Zannel, Pickle, and Radar. While Veeker is akin to email, others are more oriented towards a personal broadcasting metaphor, but the products are really very similar.

 

Sphere
Topic: Mobile, Money Power, Startups
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Comments & Trackbacks

  1. [...] NewTeeVee: Veeker, een mobiele video en foto uitwisselingsdienst heeft een deal gesloten met NBC. [...]

    Vrijdagmiddag internetvideonieuws roundup #5 | zoomz - Alles over internetvideo on October 19th, 2007 at 7:04 am - Permalink

  2. Duh - what’s new ? veekers still around huh.
    pile on the bandwagon shozu, radar,kyte, shutterfly,
    and on and on….

    jack 007 on October 19th, 2007 at 9:32 am - Permalink

  3. [...] over mobile phones, received $2.5 million in an initial round from Labrador Ventures, reports NewTeeVee. The company, which launched in beta a year ago, has expanded beyond its original person-to-person [...]

    Video Sharing Service Veeker Raises $2.5 Million Intial Round - Pocket.Net - Mobile 2.0 on October 19th, 2007 at 10:10 am - Permalink

  4. Hi

    It’s very interessting to follow what’s currently going on in mobile-tv and multimedia-messaging closing the gap between internet and mobile.

    For me kyte has the best application. They are the pioneers with the service running for more than a half a year. The majar update from last week brings even more features.
    I also like the kyte-Application on Facebook. The integration is well done and new shows are displayed in the Facebook news feeds.

    Keep doing the good work on newteevee!

    Cheers. Claudio.

    Claudio on October 20th, 2007 at 9:41 am - Permalink

  5. [...] to be stuck — The San Francisco start-up raised $2.5 million from Labrador Ventures, but is struggling amid competition. - D(["mb"," u003c/span>u003c/font>u003c/span>u003cfont faceu003d"Times New Roman" [...]

    VentureBeat » Roundup: Brightroll, Tumblr, Collective, Veeker, MobileEye, all raise cash on October 22nd, 2007 at 2:03 pm - Permalink

  6. [...] week, it was reported that NBC News choose Veeker to power mobile video and picture uploads by viewers of of their owned-and-operated local news [...]

    San Diego Residents Reporting Fire News by Sending Mobile Video and Picture Messages to Their Local NBC Station » Veeker on October 23rd, 2007 at 3:48 pm - Permalink

  7. [...] platform powers NBC San Diego’s user-submitted content efforts, as part of an overall deal with have with NBC News. As one of the founders of Veeker, from this perspective, I need to understand why this worked. But, [...]

    NBC News 2.0 — How and Why Did NBC San Diego Recieve Over 2000 User-Submitted Pictures and Videos Covering the Fires » Veeker on October 25th, 2007 at 5:04 pm - Permalink

  8. [...] platform powers NBC San Diego’s user-submitted content efforts, as part of an overall deal we have with NBC News. As one of the founders of Veeker, from this perspective, I need to understand why this worked. But, [...]

    NBC News 2.0 — How and Why Did NBC San Diego Recieve Over 2000 User-Submitted Pictures and Videos Covering the Fires » Veeker on October 26th, 2007 at 10:03 am - Permalink

  9. we just interviewed Rodger (co-founder) of Veeker about the Veeker application (business model, funding rounds etc)… may be of interest to your readers…

    http://inbabble.com/2007/10/30/interview-rodger-raderman-co-founder-of-veeker-on-mobile-content-services/

    inbabble on October 29th, 2007 at 5:22 pm - Permalink

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