Keek, a Toronto-based startup, has secured $5.5 million in financing from a consortium of investors led by AlphaNorth Asset Management and Plazacorp Ventures, with merchant bank PowerOne Capital Markets acting as agents.
Keek essentially wants to become the Twitter for video-based status updates, a free social networking platform where users go to post, share and interact with ‘microvideos’.
Keek lets people post video updates via webcam or mobile apps. The service is integrated with the likes of Facebook, Twitter and Tumblr to enable swift and easy sharing of video messages.
A Keek video can run up to 36 seconds in length.
Perhaps the time is right now, but it’s clear that the few microvideo startups that have sprung up over the years have struggled to make waves.
I remember when Seesmic tried to become the Twitter of video before they mothballed that idea and moved on to other things (a couple of times over), and 12seconds was also forced to call it quits after a few year of operations.
Another one that launched recently is Tout, by the way.
It’s safe to say Keek and Tout will have a challenging time succeeding where Seesmic and 12seconds have faltered, but then again when was building a business every easy?