Metacafe was an Israeli video-sharing website, launched in July 2003. During the mid-2000s it was one of the largest video-sharing websites, though it eventually began to be superseded by YouTube, Vimeo and Dailymotion. On 28 August 2021, the platform's website became inactive, along with its social media pages having become abandoned.
History
Metacafe Inc. was founded in July 2003
[ Metacafe to be sold for USD 200 million Ynetnews. Retrieved January 9, 2012.] in
Tel Aviv by Israeli entrepreneurs Eyal Hertzog (Chief Technical Officer) and Arik Czerniak (CEO) and raised $3 million from Benchmark Capital. In June 2006, the company closed a
venture capital round of $12 million. Investors included
Accel Partners and Benchmark Capital. 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.
[ We Try Harder, article from IPcommunications.tmcnet.com ] It used to attract more than 13 million unique monthly U.S. viewers and streamed more than 53 million videos in the U.S. each month, according to comScore Video Metrix (March 2011). The site's global audience was more than 40 million unique monthly viewers.
In its early years, Metacafe was similar to other video viewing websites such as YouTube or Dailymotion, but later turned into a short-form video entertainment. The company's partners had included marquee content providers such as major movie studios, video game publishers, broadcast and cable TV networks, music labels and sports leagues.
The site was supported through ads, and worked closely with brands in the entertainment, consumer electronics, telecommunications, consumer packaged goods, food & beverage, and automotive sectors.
In 2007, Erick Hachenburg, previously an executive with Electronic Arts, took over as CEO of the company.
In June 2012 it was reported that Metacafe had been acquired by digital talent agency The Collective. Headquarters were moved to San Francisco, California, with another office in Los Angeles.
Producer Rewards
In October 2006, Metacafe announced its Producer Rewards
program in which video producers were paid for their original content. Through this program, any video that was viewed a minimum of 20,000 times, achieved a VideoRank rating of 3.00 or higher, and did not violate any
copyrights or other Metacafe community standards was awarded $5 for every 1,000 U.S. views.
The program had several success stories, some of which have been featured on national TV, such as The Can Tossing Video,[ Metacafe.com] the Beer Launching Fridge on David Letterman, and the Ron Paul Girl series[ Livfilms.com ] by Liv Films,[ Liv Films' Channel] as featured on Fox News and CNN.[ Livfilms.com ]
Closure
On 28 August 2021, with neither warning announcement, Metacafe's website became inactive. Until October 2022 the URL redirected to VideosHub.
See also
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Comparison of video hosting services
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Veoh
Footnotes
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Bogatin, Donna. Interview with Metacafe CEO Arik Czerniak on ZDnet Blogs
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Gerson, Jen. Off the wall flips. From the Toronto Star. An article about a producer who has earned over $23,000 in Producer Rewards.
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Holahan, Catherine. Don't I know you from the Internet? From Business Week
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Marshall, Matt. Metacafe unveils producer awards, to underscore advantage over YouTube from Venture Beat
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Richmond, Will. "Metacafe Drives Community-Based Programming Model." videonuze.com, Commentary from online video news blog VideoNuze published on December 6, 2007.
External links
