As the hundreds of online video sites give themselves a hard look following the YouTube deal (and the Universal lawsuit), more and more of them are telling us they want to polish things up. Two things in particular keep coming up: partnering with a digital fingerprinting service (like Snocap) to weed out copyrighted content, or licensing a web-based video editing service to get visitors more engaged with a site’s content.
Now we hear that Eyespot, which is just such a video editing service, has raised $3.7 million from Gabriel Venture Partners, Express Ventures, and individuals from MP3.com and DivX (the company got a seed round led by Express Ventures, but it is not disclosing the amount we are waiting for a fact-check on Eyespot’s total amount of funding to date). This comes a month after competitor Jumpcut got snatched up by Yahoo — effectively eliminating it from licensing deals for the foreseeable future (update: Mike from Jumpcut says in the comments that they’re “still very much in the licensing game”).
Eyespot, which offers simple Flash-based tools for cutting, adding effects, and sharing video clips, currently has deals with Lions Gate Entertainment, Blip.tv, Veoh Networks, Current TV and artists from labels including Zomba/Jive, TVT, Columbia, Epic, Island Records, and Concord Records.
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4:01 AM PT
[...] meanwhile, keeps racking up the wins (something Liz saw coming last Fall after Jumpcut got taken out by Yahoo). Besides the ones mentioned above, we’re a day behind [...]
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5:58 PM PT
It should be noted that Eyespot uses Flash for the trimming and play of video, but is primarily an AJAX site. Using AJAX for all sharing, exploring, and video mixing.
6:11 PM PT
Liz, Jumpcut is still very much in the licensing game. We have an API that has already been lauched inside foxatomic.com. David Dudas and I were just on a panel at digital hollywood together talking about this. I’m happy for him and the team and look forward to the competition!
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