Metacafe
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
| Metacafe | |
|---|---|
 |
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| Type | Private |
| Founded | July 2003 |
| Headquarters | Palo Alto, CA |
| Industry | Online video entertainment |
| Employees | 75 |
| Website | www.metacafe.com |
Metacafe is the largest independent video sharing web site, specializing in short-form original entertainment, where users upload, view and share video clips.
The company is headquartered in Palo Alto, California, with offices in Tel Aviv and New York. Metacafe is privately held and its investors include Accel Partners, Benchmark Capital, DAG Ventures and Highland Capital Partners.
Metacafe is similar to other top video vewing websites such as YouTube or Dailymotion, but with several key differences. Core differentiators include duplication elimination, Adult content filtering, an 80,000 community member reviewer panel, VideoRank, and Producer Rewards. Its VideoRank system gauges viewer reactions to videos in order to feature those that prove most popular to its viewers. Additionally, Metacafe pays video creators for original work that has exceeded a certain threshold of both total views and VideoRank score through its Producer Rewards Program.
The site features short-form videos in a variety of categories, including Animation, Comedy, Entertainment, How To, News and Events, People and Stories, Sports, Video Games and others. Original content is uploaded to the site by independent video creators, small to mid-sized production groups, and major media companies.
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[edit] History
Metacafe Inc. was founded in July 2003 in Tel Aviv by Israeli entrepreneurs Eyal Hertzog (CTO) and Arik Czerniak (CEO) and raised $3 million from Benchmark Capital. In June 2006, the company closed a Series B financing round of $12 million. Investors included Accel Partners and Benchmark Capital. The website's traffic increased rapidly, and by June 2006 it was ranked 128th by Alexa Traffic Ratings[1]. That September, the company moved its headquarters to Palo Alto, California and in October, Metacafe was ranked the third largest video site in the world according to comScore[2].
On February 5, 2007, Erick Hachenburg, previously of Electronic Arts and Pogo, took over as CEO of the company. The company closed a Series C financing round of $30 million in August, 2007 with Accel Partners, Benchmark Capital, DAG Ventures and Highland Capital Partners. Metacafe struck a deal with internet phone service Skype to provide videos to Skype users to help spiff up their "mood messages", integrating with Skype's new beta version 3.5 for Windows. The site also integrated its video content with European mobile social platform Nareos and U.S. & Spanish mobile entertainment aggregator Zed, allowing supported users to stream or download selected videos to their handsets.
[edit] Producer rewards
In October 2006, Metacafe announced its Producer Rewards[3] program in which video producers are paid for their original content. Through this program, any video that is viewed a minimum of 20,000 times, has achieved a VideoRank rating of 3.00 or higher, and does not violate any copyrights or other Metacafe community standards is awarded $5 for every 1,000 views.
As of December 2007, the top 20 producers on Metacafe have earned over $10,000 each[4], with the top producer, KipKay, having earned over $100,000[5]. In total, more than 550 independent video creators have earned more than $1 million through the Producer Rewards program.
The program had several success stories, some of which have been featured on national TV, such as the Beer Launching Fridge on Jay Leno, and the Ron Paul Girl series by Liv Films[6], that has been featured on Fox News and CNN[7].
Metacafe has also teamed up with notable TV producers like Steven Bochco (Hill Street Blues, L.A. Law) with a series called Cafe Confidential, a 44 webisode series consisting of teens and twenty-somethings sharing semi-autobiographical stories. The short-form videos, shot close-up, were taken from interviews of more than 100 people talking about memorable moments.
[edit] Company Stats
28 Million Unique Monthly Visitors- Globally (comScore Dec. 2007)
7 Million Unique Monthly Visitors- United States (comScore Dec. 2007)
68,000 Million Page Views- United States (comScore Dec. 2007)
80,000 Community Reviewers On Metacafe.com
Metacafe was ranked second behind MySpace in number of user comments per video posted in 2007. The "Metadata Metrics" report from AccuStream iMedia Research equated user comments with engagement.
[edit] References
- ^ Alexa
- ^ We Try Harder, article from [1]
- ^ Metacafe - Producer Rewards
- ^ Best Films & Video Channels at Metacafe
- ^ User Channels – Favorite movies, films and videos from our community
- ^ Liv Films' Channel
- ^ Liv Films
- Richmond, Will. "Metacafe Drives Community-Based Programming Model." [2] Commentary from online video news blog VideoNuze published on December 6, 2007.
- Hansell, Saul. "Viral Videos Still Rule on Metacafe." [3] Commentary from New York Times blog "Bits" published on October 10, 2007.
- Bogatin, Donna. Interview with Metacafe CEO Arik Czerniak on ZDnet Blogs
- Gerson, Jen. Off the wall flips. From the Toronto Star. An article about a producer who has earned over $23,000 in Producer Rewards.
- Holahan, Catherine. Don't I know you from the Internet? From Business Week
- Marshall, Matt. Metacafe unveils producer awards, to underscore advantage over YouTube from Venture Beat
[edit] See also
[edit] External links
- Metacafe Official website
