Web video startup PLYmedia recently raised a round of $6 million to $6.5 million, according to a source with knowledge of the deal. The funding has not yet been announced, but the investors are believed to be Greylock and Elron Electronic Industries, an Israeli holding company. (In fact, Elron already disclosed its investment in PLYmedia in the first quarter). Individual investors (who may have put their money in at an earlier angel round) include former PayPal CEO Bill Harris, former LucasFilm president Gordon Radley, and Gil Elbaz, co-founder of Applied Semantics (which became Google’s AdSense).
PLYmedia adds interactive layers onto Web video. These include word bubbles, subtitles, information windows, links, and ads. The company was voted the most promising Israeli startup in a Microsoft-sponsored contest last April.
The video below shows an example of its BubblePLY technology, which makes it easy to annotate videos with word balloons.
First, I can’t believe that someone raised $6 million for a comapny that puts “interactive” bubbles on videos.
This kind of “technology” is destined to be open-souce, and probably much sooner than later.
Any company that would pay for bubbles, subtitles, etc. inserted into a pre-existing online video is going to have the financial resources to pay for professionally-produced ads, with all that sh*t already included.
Any company that would employ PLY to put bubbles or suntitles on someone else’s video, without their consent, and then use it in an ad is stealing. And if they have the money to pay whoever made the video in the first place, they’ll have the money to pay a professional to redo the ad from scratch.
Second, why the hell is Micosoft giving out prizes to “best Israeli startup”?
Is there a prize for best Italian startup? Best Estonian startup? Best Taiwanese startup?
so how many deals is this for the valley this year? Is it up or down?
Seems like this video is aching for an adaptation mocking the VC’s who invested. I’m short on time today, but I hope someone will rise to the challenge.
ugh, read Enron instead of Elron at first
This reminds me of Omnisio, which was highlighted on TechCrunch months ago. Is PLYmedia taking a different direction? The fundamental technology doesn’t seem that ‘revolutionary’.
http://www.omnisio.com
BTW, with respect to my comments @1 above, I assume their ultimate aim is to market it for web advertising, because there is simply no other profitable business model for this.
If they try to sell it to the 14 year-old boy crowd, and charge them for it, their audience will get bored with it after 1 or 2 uses, or until they discover some widget somewhere that foes the same thing.
And like I said, the potential to make money selling this to advertisers is almost nil, because the technology is so generic that it will migrate to open source soon, and companies with money will have the money to hire professional ad agencies.
Have Greylock, Elron and PLYMedia all declined to comment on the rumored investment? Is this expected to be official soon?
How do we know that some startups aren’t doing “faux VC deals” — paper deals with insider friends, to boost the valuations of their companies, so that they can later scam a second round of cash from outside investors…?
I would think this would be possible. If a startup knows someone who is willing to fake a first-round VC deal, all they have to do is draw up the phony paperwork and transfer money from one account to another.
Then later, when they get the second round (i.e., real money), the startup people and their friends, the phony VC investors, just split the money from the deal and create phony-baloney “positions” for each other, living off their salaries until they can put money into a new “deal”.
I’m not saying anyone in particular has done this, but with the frivolity and triviality of so many investments we’ve been seeing these days, it’s almost inconceivable that *real* VCs would be investing *real* money into these companies.
Congrads guys! From your friends at Qoof
Plymedia is turning into a content platform for all content you might want to display over videos. it can be professional paid-for content, as well as UGC. they are connecting to all of the potential overlay content providers. With Ben Enosh, as CEO, I am sure the company will find a way to massive success.
Isn’t this just a rip off of this?
http://www.techcrunch.com/2008.....ico-douga/
Works in Japan. Weird.
I think it’s great. Loved the video, love the company. It’s cool.
@Saket
So what? Omnisio is just a copycat of a Japanese website. Omnisio did not do anything “revolutionary”. Omnisio even clone other’s interface. That is suck !! But I guess you are working for omnisio. Oh, sorry for the comment.
Gang it is a LOT more than just caption bubbles. As the article points out it is links, ads, information windows, etc. Don;t ocus on the bubbles but focus on “overlay technology” - the ability to insert interactive images into a video or make any object inside a video interactive. Now there is some real opportunity in that space. http://www.veeple.com is developing some of the same technology so check out what they are doing as well, it is pretty cool.
Gang it is a LOT more than just caption bubbles. As the article points out it is links, ads, information windows, etc. Don’t focus on the bubbles but focus on “overlay technology” - the ability to insert interactive images into a video or make any object inside a video interactive. Now there is some real opportunity in that space. http://www.veeple.com is developing some of the same technology so check out what they are doing as well, it is pretty cool.
Ooh La La six million!
anyone who is not impressed has not seen the website in detail… I for one just saw the future of internet video. bravo!
Aydin.
These bubbles are so annoying. I can’t believe anyone would put $6M into this!
I saw one video in bubbleply’s website, where on the bubble it says “6MD” and then the bubble exploded… naa.. I didn’t really see it, but it might just happen.
their bubbleply product (www.bubbleply.com) is just one product out of a set of product covering many aspects of web video. this is a great tool which will have great future for web video (see that youtube released a much infrerior annotation tool which tries to be just that…). They aslo address a key field of video accessibility with a solution (and a service) for subtitles and voiceovers for web video (see http://www.subply.com). in addition they provide products and services for video enrichment. check out their site (www.plymedia.com) and you will understand…