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September 04, 2006
German TV Loads Up Online Video Communities
Looks like the folks behind Myvideo.de are going the strategic investor route, instead of raising venture capital. Reports coming out of Germany today say that ProSiebenSat.1, a German TV broadcaster, has taken a 30 percent stake in online video publishing site Myvideo.de, a German YouTube clone, with an option to acquire 100 percent in the future.
The plan is to use Myvideo as a source for user generated TV content, says DWDL.
Bloomberg said the deal was meant to make Pro7 less dependent on "volatile" advertising revenues, without explaining how the TV broadcaster is going to generate revenues with myvideo.de. The news agency also said that Pro7's shares climbed by 3 percent on the news.
It's not the first TV station, to take a piece of an online video community, according to DWDL, a rival broadcaster RTL, led the way with a stake in Clipfish.
Interestingly, this leaves SevenLoad, which some of alarm:clock's readers say is the better of the German online video community properties, as the only one to not have received investment from either VCs or strategic investors.
We think that Pro7 should have bought it due to the similarity of their brand-names. Seriously, we don't know the details of traffic and usage of the video sites to compare, at this point in time, but sevenload is certainly the best looking site, in our opinion, and it's offering things like APIs for third party website integration.
Sevenload was founded in 2005, is backed by angel investors, and as we understand it, it generates sales by offering its video platform as a white label service to third parties.
Update: Fred Desitn, a partner at Atlas Ventures, has some thoughts on why this was a good deal for Myvideo.de in his blog.
Read - YouTube clone shuns VC and gets investment from ProSiebenSat1 (Fred Destin blog)
Read - Myvideo Seeks Network Effect and VC (a:c euro)
Read - DWDL.de - Nach RTL hat jetzt auch ProSiebenSat.1 seinen eigenen "YouTube"-Klon
Read ProSiebenSat.1 Buys 30% in Video Web Site MyVideo.de (Bloomberg)
Posted on September 4, 2006 01:12 PM | Posted to News And Updates | Online services | Permalink
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