Business/Finance
White-Label Video Co’s: Send Your Picks
Each day we hear about another white-label video service — those friendly people who power video for your site. White-label is the new black; it’s a hugely popular second- or third- or sixth-try business model from people looking to avoid their VCs’ wrath when their YouTube clone hits a wall. Some people say YouTube’s even going to announce one of these Plan B’s next week.
We’ve written about a lot of these enterprise video players, but we know there are more out there. We want to map out the emerging sector and the relative strengths of the participants. Help us out — tell us who you like and why. If you want to pimp your own thing, that’s fine, please just disclose the relationship.
Report: RuTube to be Sold for $15M
RuTube, the Russian clone of YouTube, is close to inking a deal to be sold to media giant Gazprom-Media for $15 million, according to Kommersant (via the Quintura blog and with thanks to Google Translate).
RuTube, run by a company called ZAO Rutyub, reportedly has a monthly audience of 5.5 million. Embedded above it the current lead video on the site. Though I count more than a few Russians among my ancestors, I have no clue what it’s about.
Skyrider Shuffles Its Deck
Skyrider, a commercial peer-to-peer startup, has taken a bridge round of financing and undergone an executive shakeup. CEO Ed Kozel has given up his role to co-founder Ori Cohen, and COO Katie Mitic (formerly VP of marketing) has left the company.
Mountain View-based Skyrider has raised about $5 million in a bridge round with the participation of all its existing investors: Sequoia Capital, Charles River Ventures and Velocity Interactive Group (formerly ComVentures). Our interest was piqued when VentureBeat recently reported this round, but didn’t offer a thorough explanation as to what had happened with the company.
Kozel, who’s also a Yahoo board member, is said by multiple sources to have stepped back from the CEO role for personal reasons. He remains chairman of the Skyrider board. Mitic, who at some point last year was an entrepreneur-in-residence at Kleiner Perkins, is said to be taking on a CEO role at another startup. Skyrider now lists Anthony Bartolo, formerly of Symbol Technologies and Nortel, as COO.
Bits and Pieces of Funding for Online Video
Millions of dollars keep getting deposited into the bank accounts of video startups. Today didn’t bring any huge deals, but there were a few worth noting:
Dragonfly, a video platform company focused on high-definition, has raised $3 million in funding from angels including former football star Joe Theismann. CEO Guy Nouri’s bio says he sold a previous effort called VideoSite to GTECH back in the ’90s. Customers include Adweek. I have to say, the corporate site is way too bulky and flashy for my taste.
Magnify.net raised not a whole lot from a whole lot of investors: $1 million from Next Stage Capital, New York Angels, Rose Tech Ventures, Active Angel Investors, Chris Anderson, Ogden Capital and Gideon Gartner. It had raised $1.2 million about a year ago. Magnify helps users curate other peoples’ videos. We spoke to WeShow yesterday, and they’re expanding in this direction, too. That company is also currently trying to raise $6 million.
Crackle Lays Off 8 People, Insists It’s Growing
Crackle let go of eight of its 60 employees today after “making some changes across the board,” according to Jonathan Shambroom, the video site’s general manager, who wanted to make sure we knew that the company is still growing its revenue, content library, and even its staff.
The layoffs were not from any specific department, and Shambroom said the order to make the changes did not come from Sony (Crackle’s parent company). The timing of the layoffs was not tied to any particular event, either. “There was nothing magical about today,” said Shambroom. When asked if other layoffs are in the works, Shambroom said “Absolutely not.”
Amazon’s New Affliate Video Overlays
The two no-fuss ways to monetize your web site are to add Google AdSense, which gives you a share of price-per-click, or Amazon affiliate ads, which give you a share of products bought through your links. Until just recently, there were no parallel options for monetizing video. But last week, Google added AdSense overlays for video, and now, as supersleuth Dave Zatz has discovered, Amazon is offering affiliate overlay ads for video.
Amazon now allows members to upload videos and pick products to insert as overlays on top of them through something it’s calling the “Your Video Widget.” Users can upload videos of up to 10 minutes in length, and place as many product ads as they like as long as they appear at least 10 seconds apart. Anyone can embed a video, but only the person who uploads it gets the affiliate share.
We’ve written about lots of video overlay startups, most recently Overlay.tv. Click on the thumbnails below to see Zatz’s screenshots of the upload and ad-insertion process.
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