Kyte.tv, which is at its core a media player for personal expression, lets users send a stream of personal information to their friends: drag photos, video and text into the channels and interact with people viewing your content. In our launch post on the service in late April, I described it as falling somewhere between Twitter and Ustream, although Kyte has additional features as well.
The company is based in San Francisco, and raised $2.25 million in an initial round of financing in July 2006. Over the last several weeks they’ve brought on more investors. Swisscom and Holtzbrinck Ventures were announced in May. This week they also announced that Nokia invested in this round.
Kyte Founder Daniel Graf says his company intersects the three fastest growing areas of the Internet right now – social networking, user generated content and mobile. The mobile angle is crucial – whoever corners that market first with a compelling social application stands to gain ground easily. The Nokia and Swisscom investments will certainly help them there.
Kyte continues to evolve the product as well. They just rolled out a Facebook application that gives Kyte users another way to show off their content to friends. And they’ve inked a deal with EMI’s Capitol Records to allow users to add music for free (and legally) to their creations. Users can create a video or photo show with their webcam, add music and publish it in an instant. Graf also says that they will soon offer a cobranded Kyte solution for Swisscom mobile customers.
The company is moving aggressively to evolve its product, and I like that. This is one of those applications, like Twitter, that could sort of float around for a while and then take off suddenly when a tipping point is reached. With solid venture backing from Silicon Valley and European first tier financial and corporate investors, they can attack two large markets at once. I’m bullish on them.
I saw them doing a demo at the May SF NewTech Meetup and their stuff was really cool indeed.
If their support and feedback to users is any indication these guys are going to do well. Rapid response to issues and feature requests has been fantastic.
I like this company. I think mobile applications are very important right now too. It’s probably the last good place to do something early and interesting right now
Success for this will probably all boil down to the early relationships they set up and it seems they have that put together some smart things already. I could see them being bought quickly by a mobile carrier. Calling it a media player for personal expression is a good way to describe it. That’s pretty much what everything will be.
Deal with cell phone company + funding + facebook widget
– Looking good so far
They are doing well!
Carmelo Lisciotto
BIG UPS to Kyte.tv, any company developing platforms and innovative ways to deliver video content. What is really cool is the way these companies are also delivering A BUILT IN USER BASE. Abstract10.com would like discuss partnerships with ANY company, or developer in the online video space. We have about 10,000 proprietary video clips that we are willing to license for FREE (with the correct partners, big and small). Use our content to test your software. We really want to fill the pipelines that tech developers are building, for online video and images such as avatars, hit me up, jbirdmobi@yahoo.com, abstract10.com , Contactlive.mobi
thx
jason jenkins live
the abstract surrealist
This multimedia application for the facebook platform is truly amazing. I spoke with Kyte CEO Daniel Graf this afternoon and was blown away by the use cases and power of this application. The mobile component is pretty compelling.
You can read the rating and review of the kyte for facebook application as well as see it in action with the embedded scoble show here:
http://facerevi...acebook-profile
Cheers
Rodney Rumford
Founder: FaceReviews.com