Mesmo.tv Drops Web Site, Video Discovery
Helping people find videos to watch online seems like a good idea — especially considering the success of music recommendation services like Last.fm — but nobody’s had a lot of success with it yet. Mesmo.tv, a startup we covered when it launched and received funding, has dropped its video recommendation service after finding more traction with a loosely related Facebook application.
Speaking to NewTeeVee at the Bebo platform announcement on Wednesday, where Mesmo.tv was a launch partner, Mesmo CEO Davin Miyoshi said the company closed up shop on its video recommendation site at the end of last week. Mesmo has some 2 million users for its Facebook app. And the web site? “Not even close,” said Miyoshi.
Along with dumping its web service in favor of a social network application, Mesmo is essentially discontinuing its original idea of video recommendations. Its successful Facebook app was until recently called “TV Show Trivia,” and that’s exactly what it’s about. The company had built a Mesmo.tv app based on its original premise but has rolled that into the pursuit of TV trivia as well. Miyoshi said he’d like to resume the recommendations project down the road, but he’s not sure when.
You can’t fault Mesmo for trying to grab ahold of a good opportunity when it comes by, but this move seems a little strange considering the company’s Facebook app sees just 2 percent of its user base log in every day (that’s Facebook’s measure of user engagement; by contrast, top apps have 20 to 50 percent daily participation). At the same time, social networking platforms offer unprecedented opportunities to engage users. So perhaps them being the company’s sole focus will be a good thing. Meanwhile, video recommendation services like ffwd (formerly Vadver) have one fewer competitor.
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Liz - you keep mentioning all of these video discovery services that aren’t doing so well
I’d like to share this with you, though:
http://tinyurl.com/2lyq3o
Frank Sinton on December 13th, 2007 at 7:49 am - Permalink
Nice work, Frank. I hadn’t considered you guys a recommendation site before, but I see how you could help fill the gap here.
Liz Gannes on December 13th, 2007 at 8:44 am - Permalink
Recommendations stand-alone is fairly limited and I wouldn’t consider us a purely recommendations site either. Recommendations in the context of friends and what you are subscribed to works, and we have received very good feedback from our users on it.
The analogy is TiVo - TiVo is able to start recommending once you have started watching and recording shows. Mefeedia functions the same way. We have found just asking a few questions when someone joins produces highly inaccurate results.
Like TiVo, the majority of Mefeedia users use our service to find new shows and automatically stay updated on them. Then, they download the ones they want to watch to iTunes or Miro (or watch them on Mefeedia).
Frank Sinton on December 13th, 2007 at 9:10 am - Permalink
[...] now it’s changed focus as well, after having more success with a TV trivia application. As I wrote on [...]
Two User Bases Diverged in a Facebooked Web… - GigaOM on December 13th, 2007 at 12:17 pm - Permalink
[...] now it’s changed focus as well, after having more success with a TV trivia application. As I wrote on NewTeeVee, You can’t fault Mesmo for trying to grab ahold of a good opportunity when it comes [...]
Maxiname » Blog Archive » Two User Bases Diverged in a Facebooked Web… on December 13th, 2007 at 12:27 pm - Permalink
[...] our “Share a Video” form competed with the original Mesmo.tv website and though they have realized it is not worth pursuing as a standalone business, we will continue refining the idea as one component in our system. Likewise, we at ffwd respect [...]
ffwd team blog » Blog Archive » Who are our competitors, anyway? on December 13th, 2007 at 4:27 pm - Permalink
Eat a third and drink a third and leave the remaining third of your stomach empty. Then, when you get angry, there will be sufficient room for your rage.
Philadelphia on May 21st, 2008 at 3:43 am - Permalink