VideoEgg, a service that allows users to take video from virtually any device, transcode it to Flash and upload it for viewing on websites (see our posts on VideoEgg here) will be announcing the acquisition of Popcast in an hour or so. This news follows yesterday’s announcement by Internet TV company Brightcove that they have acquired Seattle-based metaStories. Look for more development in this space Internet TV players consolidate and define themselves around YouTube, the best known service. As a side note, Popcast was founded by Rob Lord, who is also founder of the recently released Songbird media player. See here for our posts on Songbird. → Read More
VideoEgg is announcing that it has closed a venture round with August Capital, and David Hornik has joined the board of directors. They are not disclosing the size of the round or the valuation, although I’m sure that information will be floating around later today as well and I will update as appropriate. SAN FRANCISCO, Calif., — (January 18, 2006) — VideoEgg, Inc., a leading innovator in web-based video publishing solutions, today announced that it has closed a venture round with August Capital, a leading Silicon Valley venture capital firm that invests in entrepreneurial teams throughout the information technology market spectrum. The company also announced that David Hornik from August Capital will be joining VideoEgg’s Board of Directors. Early funding for VideoEgg was provided by First Round Capital prior to its launch at DEMOfall in September 2005. This is yet another one of Josh Kopelman‘s (First Round Capital) early picks that looks to be a winner. I wrote about VideoEgg and described its service on September 21, 2005 and October 25, 2005. There are a bevy of other financing announcements for various startups being announced over the next couple of weeks. → Read More
I’ve been tracking a number of sites that offer flickr-like services for video. I’ve taken a look at as many of these services that I could find. The most well known is YouTube, which we profiled in August and which recently raised venture money from Sequoia. But there are at least eight others worth looking at as well. In addition to YouTube, these are CastPost, ClipShack, DailyMotion, Grouper, OurMedia, Revver, Vimeo and vSocial. Instead of writing individual profiles on each of these, I’ve created a quick chart that give a basic overview of the features. I’ve included only those companies that provide a web-based (v. client) service that hosts the videos on your behalf. Because of these requirements, great services like VideoEgg (profile) are not included. Here’s the chart. I’ll update it as needed. Most of these companies convert video to Flash. This reduces file size significantly and also allows most platforms and browsers to easily view the content. Two, Vimeo and DailyMotion, convert files to quicktime instead. A couple do not convert the files at all. One benefit of those services which do not convert is that the files can be downloaded by others, emailed, etc. QuickTime format can also be downloaded. One service that has a unique feature is Revver. Much like FruitCast for podcasts, Revver will auto-insert advertisements directly into your videos and share revenue with you. A couple of additional notes. Grouper has not launched their video publishing product yet. When it does launch there is a good chance it will involve a client download which would remove them from this list. Also, while I’ve noted which services allow tagging of videos, there are a wide variety of tagging options within these services, and many of them also provide comments, rankings, etc. and which are not noted in the chart. Finally, the tools to allow blogging, friends lists and other sharing are varied and more useful in some products than others. Which product is best for you depends on what types of features are most important to you. UPDATE: I’ve updated the chart above with more information. People have left great comments and have included new companies I’ve missed. If you are associated with those companies, please email me relevant information and I’ll include it in the chart. The most interesting comment is from Vinu, who tells us that he heard a rumor that Flickr will → Read More
VideoEgg is a web-based publishing service that allows users to capture video content from virtually any device and format and publish it to the web. We profiled it on September 21, 2005, just after they launched at DEMO. Michael Bazeley at SiliconBeat writes today that VideoEgg is moving the company from New Haven, Connecticut to Silicon Valley. Michael also reports more interesting news – that VideoEgg has launched a partnership with Six Apart that allows TypePad users to post video to their blogs using Videoegg technology. Check out Venture Voice’s podcast interview with Mena Trott of Six Apart and VideoEgg co-founder Kevin Sladek as well. VideoEgg, which is incredibly easy to use with just about any video device, is now directly available to a huge blogging base. My hope is that someone creates a wordpress plugin next. Congratulations to the VideoEgg team on this partnership. I’m looking forward to having you in the neighborhood as well. → Read More
Company: VideoEgg Launched: September 19, 2005 Location: New Haven CT VideoEgg, founded by three Yale graduates, launched at DEMO in Huntington Beach, CA on Monday. Given the light content on their website, my bet is that the folks at VideoEgg have been working quite hard over the last few weeks to get the product ready for release. VideoEgg is a web-based publishing service that allows users to capture video content from virtually any device and format and publish it to the web. Click here for an example featuring Buzz Bruggeman. At first glance, VideoEgg has some really excellent features. A live demo is available on their site, and allows you to drag a video into the viewer to get a taste for how easy it is to use. Flash 8 allows the viewing of videos with enhanced quality. From their launch press release: Today, VideoEgg, Inc. unveiled the VideoEgg Publisher, a new Web-based video publishing technology that makes it easy for everyday Internet users to capture, encode, upload, and watch online video for the first time. A ‘universal adapter’ that captures directly from hundreds of devices and reads dozens of formats, the VideoEgg Publisher allows users to painlessly publish video that anyone can watch without worrying about player compatibilities, encoding settings, or extra software. VideoEgg announced the Publisher at the DEMOfall 2005 Conference, the invitation only, leading industry showcase for launching innovative technology products. Currently, posting video online is complicated for users, requiring a highly technical understanding of formats, encoders, players and servers. The VideoEgg Publisher simplifies the difficult video encoding and posting process, allowing users to capture video directly into a Website from camcorders, Web cams, and mobile phones. It also accepts video files via a simple drag-and-drop interface. Before movies are encoded and posted, users can perform basic edits with the Publisher’s simple editing tools. Using this system, videos are immediately available for viewing online through the Flash-based VideoEgg Player, a “playerless” solution that does not require external players like Windows Media and QuickTime. Lots of interesting information about the service above…and the last paragraph is really interesting. Publishers can easily integrate content directly on their website by simply adding a html snippet. This is something I really like about VideoEgg – it appears that they are really focused on making their product as easy as possible to use. I’ve downloaded their software (which seems to be off → Read More
San Francisco, CA
