A site that was once competition to the now-ubiquitous YouTube has been acquired by a Hollywood management company with plenty of YouTube stars under its name. Which is rather fitting.

A Little Metacafe Background

YouTube may now be ubiquitous and the one video site everybody on the Internet has heard of, but that wasn’t always the case. As hard as it is to imagine as things stand now, there was once a time when YouTube was just one of a host of sites that people headed to in order to upload videos.

Metacafe was one such site. Founded in 2003 with similar intentions to YouTube, it eventually ceded the UGC market to the Google-owned site and began focusing instead on professionally-produced content.

This has worked out to a point, but Metacafe is very much a niche site now. Traffic appears to be steadily falling, with the site claiming 12 million unique visitors a month at the last count.

The last time I wrote about Metacafe on WebTVWire was back in September 2010 when I noted that it has “now conceded defeat to YouTube,” but added that it’s “building vertical channels and nurturing content.”

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Metacafe may not have achieved its initial aim of competing with YouTube on a level playing field, but it’s far from down and out. In fact, it’s building vertical channels and nurturing content in such a way that the site has a promising future.

WhoTube?

Metacafe has now definitely now conceded defeat to YouTube when it comes to UGC. And with good reason, as YouTube is THE site for anyone looking to upload a video they’ve shot and want to share with the world. YouTube has become ubiquitous.

However, that doesn’t mean Metacafe has failed, or that it’s destined to die a horrible death in the same manner as Joost did. Instead, it needs to adapt and evolve. Which is exactly what it’s already done, and is continuing to do.

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Another day, another survey about online video. This particular one throws up some interesting results, particularly in terms of how often people are watching online video, how it compares to TV, and the increased acceptance of advertising.

Metacafe Survey

Every single piece of analysis conducted over the last few years has suggested online video is growing, and in a supremely fast and aggressive manner. And a new survey on behalf of Metacafe continues this trend.

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Metacafe was once the hottest video sharing site, and although it’s growth has seemed to falter over the past year, it still boasted 28 million unique visitors during March.

But that hasn’t stopped the service’s founders, Arik Czerniak and Ofer Adler, from leaving the company, and cashing in their shares to the tune of $5 million on their way out of the door.

No Longer CEO

Czerniak had already stepped down as CEO of the company in February 2007, just months after the company was reportedly offered to interested buyers for between $200 and $300 million.

Now, according to Israeli newspaper The Marker, both he and fellow founder Adler have left the company for good. Between them the pair are thought to have held only 5% of the company’s shares.

Two new investors have sunk an additional $30 million in online video site Metacafe. Highland Capital Partners and DAG Ventures join several existing investors in the site, which attracts 25 million unique visitors each month.

The cash will be used to fund global growth and to expand the depth of content available through the site’s Producer Rewards program and through partnerships with well known media companies.

Richard de Silva of Highland Capital said:

Metacafe is defining the next generation of online video, moving away from simple video sharing and hosting to delivering an exceptional entertainment experience for short-form content. Its sophisticated approach to audience-driven programming is unique in the industry.

Metacafe has just launched their new Facebook application. Metacafe is the 3rd largest video site in the world, and this new application will only add to its popularity.

Facebook users can now search through all the videos on Metacafe, see what is popular, both in your network, and on Metacafe itself, share videos with friends, and leave comments.

This application also makes use of MetaCafe’s new user channels feature, which allows anyone to create, update and promote their very own video channels on Metacafe. 

Skype 3.5 for Windows was released to the public a few days ago, and to coincide with this upgrade, Skype and Dailymotion, an online video community have partnered together.

This new version of Skype adds videos from the video-sharing sites Dailymotion and Metacafe to Skype and will establish an exclusive channel. This will allow Skype users to share videos from Dailymotion’s Mood Channels.